


Cracking Down the Spine

by Scrumpadouchus, StarOverHeaven



Series: Star Guardian [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Guardians (League of Legends), Angst, Blood and Gore, DO NOT REPOST THIS WORK, F/F, F/M, Familiars, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2020-10-25 21:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20730842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrumpadouchus/pseuds/Scrumpadouchus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: Post Twilight-Star, Xayah and Rakan finally confront the Star Guardians.





	1. "There's No Way I'll Ever Regret It"

**Author's Note:**

>   
Hello everyone! This fic occurs immediately post the events of the Star Guardian short story 'Twilight Star', which was released along with the pretty new skins not too long ago! If you aren't caught up with the Star Guardian lore, or simply don't feel like deep diving into all the content, don't despair! Myself and my dear friend Idolbirdswitharms made this google slideshow to catch everyone up on the content, quick and easy. ;) If you're interested, please check out this link! (Just remove the space after https: ) https: //docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wOsPnr7JBUufQcMteBl_5FwX4pBS0XnfrIqmA-mFRWE/edit#slide=id.p1
> 
> Thank you!

  


________________________________________

"Xayah." Rakan says, but she isn't paying attention. "Xayah?" 

"Did you say something?" She asks, clearly dismissive. She doesn't even glance at him from where she's been crouched on the edge of the building, surveying the area. 

"...It’s nothing." He says, biting his tongue. His mouth tastes like ash and bile. Her attention is already gone before he says the words; he can feel her in his gem, what's left of it. The crack seeps in black and gold, and he feels as though his magic is fading into clumps of ash at his fingertips. He calls on the Dark Matter for the patch-job instead, feels it seep into him like a rot. It isn't nice to use, but his light fades with every use. _He needs to keep what he has left for Xayah_. 

"Pay attention. It’s your fault we lost Neeko." Xayah says, flaring her wing as she stands to her full height. She still barely comes up to his shoulder. She pokes a thin finger against his sternum. "Zoe is going to arrive soon. If not the lizard, we should at least have some gems ready for her to add to her collection." 

Rakan can tell. The sky is getting dark, and bubbles are beginning to fall. Ran is already here to announce Zoe's arrival, popping through a portal, a second set of eyes for Zoe. He frowns at the sky. They'd arrived now long ago, two comets of color. _ The Guardians have become lax and lazy; did they truly expect them not to follow? Weak _ . But when he breathes in, he can feel their _light_, like water thinned soap. He breathes in a bit deeper, concentrating. Some of the scents are unfamiliar. Fresh. He hums thoughtfully, but Xayah doesn't even twitch an ear at him. So he doesn't tell her. 

Rakan isn't sure why he does it. He used to tell her everything he noticed, but she would grow irritated with him. He still checked, just in case. Xayah never paid attention anymore. It was his job to do it for her, now. 

He can feel the bubbles landing on his cheek, spreading his fragile veneer thin and revealing the Dark under it. He can feel the decay of his facade. Direct exposure to the corruption that Zoe used, the Dark Matter, felt like putting his skin in an ice cold fire, abrasive to what little light he still has left. It blistered and broke the skin. Rakan brushed his fingers over his own cheek, feeling the skin peel and then disappear like a thin coat of paint to show the shadow under it. 

His wounds throb with a cresting pounding, coming and going like waves on a beach, but it's a secondary thing. He can feel where he's been worn thin, where Neeko’s magic has weakened him. Taking the impact of all that Light had burned his back, and he can feel the blood dripping, slow and thick, down his spine. The skin has cracked open like pottery, peeling up like blistered skin. It doesn't hurt as much as it should, but he can recognise it growing worse with time. He can’t regenerate the places where Neeko’s light burnt him away unless he rests, but he won't leave Xayah to fight alone. 

He's pretty sure she isn't aware of it anyway. Perhaps she had felt the wound through their bond when it was first beginning, when he couldn't stitch his facade fast enough, but she hasn't mentioned it. _Perhaps she doesn't care_. He wouldn't be surprised. 

He moves closer to the edge of the roof, winces as he feels the pain worsen. His feathers part so the wind can touch the peeling flesh, and it's almost _soothing_ as he sets a foot up on the wall edge of the building. He leans forwards to curl his claws around the edge and lay his chest onto his knee to relieve the pain a bit, tail swishing irritably. 

He can see Guardians in the park across the road from their position. The bubbles have almost all been popped at this point, though one of them looks to have gotten caught out. They're not the ones he knows, younger and fresher. But there's one that he recognises. _Sarah_. He feels his lips curl back to reveal fangs. _ He can't forgive her. If it had been just him… but Xayah, too_? Their strongest efforts wouldn't stop him from tearing this betrayer apart. 

"Rakan, listen." 

He glances over, but she's not looking at him. She's watching the Guardians like a hawk eyeing mice free for the picking. "Take care of the young ones. They're weak. I'm sure you can take them while I take care of Sarah." 

As she speaks her wings are spreading, glinting and faintly transparent. Rakan looks down at the little Guardians, and lifts his second foot up to the edge of the building before also spreading his wings. _They wouldn't do much to slow the fall_; they'd taken the brunt of the impact of Neekos light, leaving them thin and tattered. "Don’t worry~! I'll take care of it." He says, but she's already gone, fast approaching the Guardians. 

He leaps down and breaks into a sprint, diving between Xayah and the rest after she's launched herself into Sarah and sent both of them flying. He grins at the new ones, all sharp teeth and eagerness that he didn't feel. 

"Oh, you're real fresh huh?" He wonders aloud, cloak flaring as he examines them. One of them is unconscious; touched by Zoe's magic, looks like. A short angry blue one is guarding her, so Rakan turns his attention to the pink, red and purple ones who are obviously getting ready to fight. "I'd go easy on you, but orders are orders and I can't exactly say no." 

"Lux! Get away from him!" 

Rakan twitches an ear at Sarah's shout. It draws their attention away. Lux must be the pink one, judging by her reaction. Is this a new group? 

"So nice to see she's replaced us already." Rakan says casually, stalking leisurely towards Lux. She steps back immediately, and he sees the red one ready her familiars; _another guardian carrying two, like Sarah. Interesting_. The purple one is frozen, staring at him. He doesn't recognize her. Rakan tilts his head. 

"I wonder what number you are. Her second team? Her third? How many people has dear little _Sarah _left to _die, hm?_ Such a Guardian she is. I remember. I wonder if _she_ does?" He snickers, leaning back. 

He's so much _taller _than they are. It's almost startling, truthfully. He feels his grin get a bit more genuine, a little sharper, and he scans them like a predator. The one named Lux is frozen, staring at him as though he's cracked someone’s ribs open in front of her and eaten their heart. _What a tempting image_. 

"Enough of this!" The red one shouts, and Rakan deftly leaps back. Bullets rain where he'd been standing, and he laughs despite himself. _At least one of the star babies has some fire_. 

"What is it with red ones and guns?" He muses aloud, digging his toes into the ground as he lands. His feathers fall into place, glinting as he pulls in to form a shield over them. He could tank a few bullets, and the Dark Matter he carried could do a mediocre patch job, if needed. 

Rakan dodges _something_ that one of them throws at him, and slaps purple’s familiar away from himself with his feathers as he does so. Little _rat. _He leaps towards Lux, claws outstretched. She finally moves, throwing her staff that twirls out and returns, shielding her. He turns his attention to the red one instead, digging his clawed toes into the grassy turf and changes directions deftly. 

She swears and stumbles back as he barely misses her face with his swipe, and Rakan laughs as he twirls around her, stirring the dirt as he digs his claws into her side. "Jinx!" One shouts, then the blue one's there, slamming into him. 

The pain is brief, but losing his target is_ irritating_. He gathers his magic into his hand, and slams it into the ground. Black and green bursts up, knocking little Blue and Red away. Riku disappears back into his chest. He doesn't trust these little twerps not to aim for him. 

"Awh, that's no fair little Blue." He purrs. "You remind me of me! So loyal, diving to rescue your team. I wonder how you'd feel if they left you to die." His jovial tone fades to a dark, bitter anger while his smile turns into more of a snarl. His eyes glint, and he can feel his skin cracking on his chest from the hammer’s blow. 

He's too hurt to fight this. But if he doesn't fight, Xayah will be fighting alone. He can't allow that to happen. 

His comments are throwing them, he can tell. _They’re not used to opponents that can talk back_. He laughs, deep and mocking, and gathers his magic again, throwing Riku out with his left hand. He hits his mark, and Riku returns to him holding a piece of stolen light. It spreads over him, lightens him briefly to what he used to be, and the babies freeze up as his features changed. This one _always _ threw Guardians off. _Poor little Rakan, a puppet of darkness_. How _hilarious_. 

He tilts his head at them when the light bursts, swallowed up, and the cracks on his chest seal closed. "So reluctant to fight." He muses, stepping back forward. _Good to keep within jumping range_. Lux throws her light at him, and he sidesteps it easily. "So young. Inexperienced. I almost feel _bad_." 

Every step he takes has them backing up. Dear little Red is bleeding pretty bad, holding her side where the flesh has been separated in a chunk by his claws. Blue is posturing aggressively over the green one, and Purple is trying to heal Red. That wound is festering with dark matter, but little Red is strong and also _angry, _so she'll live. 

Why are they so afraid? He hasn't even fought them _properly_ yet. The green one is still asleep; the small blue one scrambles to pick her up as he draws nearer. _This_, his heart sympathises with a dead pang, _ It gets a whole lot harder when you know they’re never waking back up _ . Another step towards them, and from the right of him he hears the red one shout; still not ready to lay down yet. _He can admire that_. Rakan turns his attention back to her. The pink leader is standing at her side now, staff held out in front of them like it’d offer some kind of defense. 

He leaps forward with another low chuckle, fakes left then dives right, down then twists _up_. The star-babies are launched off their feet - so light, so small, it hardly took any effort on his part. 

He almost feels bad. _Oh wait._ He doesn't! Rakan grins, eager and wild. He'd forgotten what it was like to _fight, _half dead and dying. It was thrilling, a pull that he hadn't felt in a long time. The satisfaction was deeper than the pain of his wounds could reach. 

"Fight me!" He shouts, because if they didn't they would _die. _That wouldn't be fair, to kill them when they had yet to experience a true fight. _They're so young, _some part of him marvels, even as he lunges to sink his claws into the green one. 

Blue puts up a barrier that stops him and he growls despite himself, a low rumble as he turns and goes for Jinx instead. _Fight me. Fight me. **Fight me.**_

She does. 

He lets out a pitched shriek as she conjures something and throws it in front of him as Lux throws her staff to shield baby Red. He trips over it and rolls, and his back feels like its been sliced open. The splitting of a scab. He skids to a stop, crouching down and watching them, fingers and feet dug into the dirt. 

The corruption that has infested his blood is dripping down his back, coating his feathers like oil. Rakan stands slowly, stretching to his full height and pulling at the places where his flesh has ripped open anew, spreading black blood over the skin. It shines iridescent with his thinning light. Old wounds reopening, layered from the fight before, and the fight before that, and the one before that... 

_Good, _ some hollow part of his heart whispers, _if_ _the end is coming...I can finally get my last performance in. _

It's a standoff; they're startled and fearful, and it’s so _satisfying_; Lux is wounded and Jinx's side is painted red like he's butchered her. Green’s out of the fight and Blues too occupied guarding her to be much help to the others. 

Still, he has a target on his back in a quite _literal_ sense. 

He flexes his claws, can feel himself warping. The little light that remains unblemished inside him is strengthened by the presence of so many pure guardians, but the Dark Matter Zoe has stained him with is _fighting_ it. Decay clawing into fresh, unblemished flesh. He smiles and it's all teeth, fanged and terrible. 

The light of a low sun casts long shadows. 

"Isn't it delightful?" He asks casually, spreading his hands to either side of himself. The angle has black dripping down his arms, pooling under him in thick drops. "What they've done to me?" He adds, stepping forward. There's an awful, fleshy _rip_ as his feathers finally give in and his wings unfold, tattered and black. 

The sun is setting. Shadows reach from the park’s swing-set like long, unearthly arms. They remind him of the hands that reach from Zoe’s familiar when he’s caught someone in his trap, pulling them into the wicked dreams. 

The red one with the long twin-tails is closest. _ Is her hair natural? How… interesting_. Perhaps when he’s done, the rest of her will match the hue. The dark is rising. _Zoe must be getting closer_. He can feel the tether loosening, even as his back screams like it’s going to split in two. _He’s alive_, and the agony of it is_ divine_. 

Rakan twitches his ears back. Xayah is still fighting; the sound of feathers thumping into the ground is familiar, but he can tell that she’s dragging out the fight. _Waiting for him_? Maybe, but she’s been waiting for this satisfaction for a _long time_, and Rakan doubts that she’d lengthen this particular fight just so he could join. He has to finish this _quick_. 

He moves. Rakan’s fast, and he’s never met a Guardian faster than he is. The dark has only made him quicker, and it shows; he reaches Red before any of them can react, spins around her almost tauntingly and watches her gaze get hazy and unfocused, like glass as she watches him. Here it’s easy; he cups her chin as she leans in with her hands slack on her guns, his nails sharp enough to leave pinpricks of red that match her hair. She can’t look away; nobody can, except maybe Xayah. He’s never gotten her to focus on him no matter how hard he tries. _Not anymore_. 

The purple one, surprisingly, acts first. Out of all of them he’d perhaps expected Lux to act first; she seemed to take Jinx’s damage personally, but the Purple one he’d never bothered to learn the name of was faster. The wind she throws out is strong but pure, so bright it _burns_. It throws him back, and he digs his toes into the ground to keep himself in place, folding his wings tight and glaring at her with golden hate. 

He’s too focused on the purple Guardian, misses it entirely. _A stupid mistake_. The light Lux throws out hits him, trapping him. He can’t move, like his limbs have been locked in place. He doesn’t panic, but it’s a close thing as he pulls his magic in tight, trying to erect a shield. 

It’s not strong enough. 

The flash he sees fades as soon as he sees it, between the little pink one’s hands, and then _gone_. The noise he makes cuts off not even halfway through. It’s not agony, or shock, but something completely inhuman he didn’t even know he could make. It _hurts. _There’s so much that he used to have that feels like it’s still there. Only a moment before, it was. But now.... 

Black spatters to the ground, and he reaches up towards his chest to find nothing meets his hand. 

For a brief moment he’s confused, and he only knows one thing to do when that happens. He reaches through that fragile bond, and desperately grasps for Xayah. She’s there, like a faded mirror, and he can feel her abrupt and sudden focus like a cannon shot. _When was the last time he used this_? It feels like ages ago, and everything is _slow_. 

He doesn’t pay any attention to the little Guardians. They don’t matter, and neither do their shocked, horrified expressions. _Where’s Xayah_ ? He tries to move and find that even the effort is agony, and_when did he collapse to one knee?_ _He doesn’t have time for this_. 

_Xayah?_ He tries to ask, but the words don’t come out. Liquid drips down his chin, shining with the sheen of green and blue. It’s familiar, but his mind is foggy. 

_He needs to get to Xayah_ . 

Rakan stands and feels pieces of himself get left behind, but he doesn’t glance to see what he’s left. His wings _hurt_. They feel like fragile gossamer, torn and pressed down. _Xayah’s getting closer_. He should jump to her, but every movement is aching, a stabbing where things _should be_ but are fading away. His legs feel fragile, hollow bones and torn flesh, but he can see that they’re fine. His knees are just weak for some reason. 

Still, he steps towards where he can sense his lover. Something in his left leg collapses when he takes the step, and he starts to crumple. Oh, but she’s so _close_. She moves towards him faster than he’d thought she could, clutching at him. Her nails are sharp, he notes, and her movements aren’t precise, but quick and fluttering. _ Is Xayah alright? Is she worried about something? He’d have to fix it, later _ … 

_When did they get on the ground?_

Oh. 

_Oh._

He blinks languidly at her, reaches up. His arm is heavy, and he swears that he can’t feel her anymore, even though he can see his fingertips against her cheek. The pain is faded, secondary. He needs to _focus. _His hand drops and he touches her neck because he can’t reach her face; his arms are weak, and his breaths stutter. 

_I have to do this,_ He thinks, but it’s slow and vague and frustrating to think. _ I need you to know. I need you to accept it. Accept me. One last time, Miella. That’s it. One last… One last time... _

“...You should kiss me.” He says casually through the blood. She looks like she’s going to hit him, so he focuses on that. _She’s always so beautiful when she’s angry_. She’s speaking, mouth moving emptily and he can’t hear her, his eyes glazed even as he _focuses_. It’s hard to gather up the energy, but he condenses everything he has. It feels like he’s scooping out of a puddle trying to gather all the drops, and he’s desperate to get everything he can. _Just now, just for now, please, I know you haven’t_ \- 

His hand slips, lower. To her broachclenching her cape, to her beautiful unbroken gem. She feels so _strong, _like a tower to guide him in the night. It’s his turn this time. Xayah goes stiff, staring at him, and he can practically hear her saying those words he knows so well. _Rakan, don’t, you idiot…!_

Too bad she can’t stop him, not this time. 

He gathers it all, and _pushes._ Xayah makes a choked noise above him, and he can sense more of himself fading. _It’s worth it,_ he thinks hazily. It feels like he’s being drained, like he’s dripping away. His lungs hitch and it’s becoming harder to _breathe_, but it’s feeling Riku disappear that tells him he’s succeeded. He pushes just that bit harder, and then his hand drops away. He didn’t get all of it. _Messing up again, huh, Rakan? _

He needs this _, please he needs this - one last push, the rest of him, for her -_

His thoughts are cloudy and distorted, and he can hardly see her anymore. She’s so distant, even through their fractured bond. He feels like a tiny piece of dust compared to her now. She’s so overfull of Light; every piece he’s saved for her, and what he’s gathered that remains of her own. 

He watches her for a moment through a blurry gaze, and feels warm drops on his face. _Don’t cry for me, Miella. Live for me, instead,_ \- he thinks, but there’s so little left of him he can’t send her his thoughts, can’t even give her the remnants of love he has left. He watches her until he’s too weak to hold his eyes open, to hold himself at all. He can’t even feel his blood leeching away anymore, away to feed her life, her _heart, her soul he’s known so well.._. 

He keeps his gaze on her, that last glimpse of pale pink - _it’s been so long I've almost forgotten -_ until his eyelids feel like stone and they tremble with effort as he struggles to keep them up. One last performance. He hopes she'll keep it, keep _him_. The pain is finally fading, along with the final dregs of himself. _Worth it,_ he thinks briefly, right before his eyes fall shut and he abruptly thinks nothing at all. 


	2. "I Was Stupid, So Stupid"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xayah learns that being 'free' isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!! This thing is going to go longer than expected, (we're at 23,000 words in the google doc right now, wow!) so the good news for you all is that updates will probably come fairly frequently. Fingers crossed that between work and school the two of us can finish this entire thing in a timely manner, haha.
> 
> More importantly!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you who've commented, familiar faces and new. ;u; It legit makes my day and Star's day to even get one person saying hi and/or screaming at us. <3 We hope you enjoy this chapter!!!  
\----------------------------------------  


“Rakan.” Xayah lays fingers at his throat, holds them there while she tries to halt their tremor unsuccessfully. No pulse, no beat, _her hands are slick now, covered in his lifeblood_. The star-babies are staring, still frozen with their hands on their weapons. The pink leader has tears in her eyes. Did they forgive enemies so easily, _did they offer truce so fast_? Still, they _wait_, watch, and she tries again, taking her gem back from his slack hand and pushing it hard against his own blackened, cracked stone. “I don’t want it! Rakan, take it back!” He could be resurrected if she can just get his gem to colour. To return his light to _him_. 

The pink one is talking. Xayah has to focus hard to hear her. 

“Did I - ? I thought, I didn’t mean -!” She lowers her staff, hands shaking, but the red one is still watching intently, gun aimed at the ready, and nudges her friend to raise the staff once more into the offensive. 

She can't _feel_ it, can't sense what she had taken for granted for _years_. Gone, gone, she's empty, a sucking void in the spaces where he had been constant. His laughter, his faded warmth and his diligence, a low echo to her. She can't feel his pain or the turmoil of his emotions anymore. Now, she’s alone in her heart and mind with just her thoughts, her sensations solely her own. It’s cold, it’s quiet. _Like she’s back on that planet, staring up at the sky_... 

...Yet her star is_ green_. Not marbled with pink or blue but full green, solid and pure, like it hasn't been for a very, _very_ long time. She tries again, strokes at his cheek; there’s black leaking steady out of his chest that shines with blue and green like an oil slick, his gem is dark, devoid of colour, devoid of _her_ \- 

It was _their_ fault. 

She rises from Rakan’s side slowly, puts her back to him even slower. _Her chest doesn’t even hurt_. It had after that flash of light, briefly beating through their link of reciprocity, and then it had been snuffed out when his eyes closed like a lit wick being pinched between two fingers. 

“What, didn’t realise your powers were dangerous? That they could _kill_?” Xayah spits, fans out a set of star daggers between her fingers. This anger feels so much more raw than the hurt fueled by Zoe ever had; it swamps her, swallows her up until she can’t breathe, can’t _think_. 

“You _took him from me_.” 

The young leader is shaking her head faintly, eyes wide as saucers as she takes a step backwards. 

“ - I… It shouldn’t have - ! I didn’t _want_ \- “ 

Zoe has yet to arrive. She can’t feel the presence of their _boss_, not anymore with a cleansed gem, but her feathers are still sharp, on edge, and regardless of the shade of her gem she wants to see _red_. _They’ll pay for this, or she’ll die trying_ \- 

“Shut up!!” 

She throws a line; they bounce off the girl’s prismatic barrier one by one with a stinging _ping_. Pink flinches at the sound, but is unharmed. 

Xayah looses another set of daggers with a wordless scream, _useless, half of them miss_. The red star guardian pulls out a smaller gun, she barely sees it before she shoots it: Xayah’s entire body immediately clenches, muscles spasming from electricity, doubling her over onto her knees. The pink leader follows up with another flash of light, but it doesn’t burn her through like it did Rakan. It locks her up further, drops her to the playground’s dusty gravel with her limbs paralysed. 

Out of the corner of her eye she sees the purple one lean down towards Rakan. _No, no she can’t. She’ll take him away from her_. 

“Don’t you dare touch him!! I’ll kill you if you touch him!” She’s not intimidating like this, useless and prone. Purple continues to ignore her, reaches down to hover her hand over Rakan’s soul gem. There’s a vision clear in her mind of her love’s gem being passed around by these children, leered at one by one before they shatter it into dust using the short one’s hammer. _She can’t let that happen_. Her muscles are jello, she struggles on the ground, manages to lift her chest up a few inches before she hears the click of the gun. 

Electricity races through her for a second time, and she locks back up, body jerking rigid into a half fetal curl and dropping back onto the gravel. Her eyes burn; she bites her lip to hold back a sob. _She’s not crying anymore, not in front of them_. 

“...don’t… don’t touch him. Please.” she chokes, her lungs feel as frozen as the rest of her. Pink gasps, abashed. 

“Jinx! You didn’t have to -” 

“ - you saw her Luxy. We’re not giving her that chance. Short-stack, how’s loops?” 

A distinctly higher-pitched voice answers; “Still asleep. I gave her a shake, but she’s not waking up.” 

Then Lux speaks: 

“Janna? Have you seen anything like this before?” 

“We may need Soraka for this.” This speaker is soft-spoken and calm. Collected; directly contrasting with Lux, whose voice still trembles every few words. _Must be lady purple_. 

“Sarah said she’s at work, I can - “ There’s clicking and key tones of a cell phone. “Argh! I don’t have her cell number!!! But Sarah should have it.” There’s a pause. “Wait, where’s Sarah?” Then, quieter; “_No_. Do you think _she_…?” 

Xayah knows what Lux is trying to keep her from hearing. _Fortunately_ for the star-babies, she hadn’t managed to finish off Sarah before she’d felt Rakan calling for her. Maybe she should have bothered to do that first; they probably wouldn’t be keeping her alive as a prisoner if she had. 

“_Glad_ to see you’re all worried about me.” 

Several voices call out _Sarah_! with varying levels of relief. Xayah groans and attempts to sit up in a way that doesn’t make her seem too threatening. If she had to take another cattle-prod’s worth of electricity again, she wouldn’t be walking again tonight. 

She manages to sit; and squints. Everything briefly spins, and her heart aches. Over by the walking trail that cuts into a short wooded area, she sees a red shape headed towards them. 

Sarah is limping over to the rest of the younger star guardians, guns still in hand. Her face remains impassive, even though her gaze appears to linger over Rakan, before it slides over to rest on Xayah. 

She raises both pistols, aims them both square at Xayah’s forehead. None of the younger guardians move to stop her. 

“What does Zoe want?” Fortune’s fingers are itchy; Xayah can tell the safety is off, and both pointer fingers are resting on the triggers. 

“Same as she wanted last time.” Her voice is hoarse. She swallows twice, keeps her gaze level with Fortune’s. _A lot has changed since she’s seen her last_. 

Her expression doesn’t waver. 

“You’re on _her_ side now?” 

“We had no choice. You all _left_ us. Do you know how long Rakan waited there with me? Alone, on that planet?? By the time Zoe found him… what else was left?! What would you have done?” 

She hadn’t dwelled about it, strangely, when she was wearing Zoe’s colours. Now everything pangs like new skin, like she’s fresh with no resistance to the world or even to her own thoughts. _Rakan… if I were left with his body now…_ she’s sure she wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes, let alone twenty hours. 

“You seem fine now.” Sarah gestures sharply with the barrel of her right pistol at her cloak’s broach. “What happened to Ahri? And Neeko?” 

Xayah almost balks. Sarah is cold as steel; more guarded than perhaps originally thought. Reflexively her hand goes up to cover her own soul gem. She pulls her lips together tight. The seconds of silence between them drag hard, and Sarah’s fingers start to shake. _Poor trigger discipline, at least that hadn’t changed_. 

Sarah’s bright green eyes narrow. “Tell me, or I’ll end you right here.” The guns move closer, like a half a foot made that much of a difference on such a close target. Xayah lifts her chin. 

“Do it.” 

She can’t help it; she drags her eyes away from Sarah to stare behind her. _Would she meet up with him, where-ever he is? She hopes so_. If she had a choice, she wants him to be the last thing she sees. 

The gun doesn’t fire. Sarah scoffs, turns. Steps away, walks back quick toward Janna. Xayah frowns, lips slightly part. _What was she _\- ? 

Sarah leans down and yanks Rakan’s soul-gem from his cloak in one abrupt movement. Then she turns, staying a fair distance back from her this time. She dangles the gem in her left hand, holds the barrel of her pistol flush with the stone with her right. 

“I’ll shatter it. Break it into dust.” 

“You wouldn’t.” 

“Watch me.” 

Sarah doesn’t falter, not for a millisecond. The gem is black, drained, stained with blood. If she jumps up and lunges for it, she wouldn’t make it in time, not with Lux’s binding magic and Jinx’s taser. Xayah looks at her hands, then over to _Red_ and _Pink_. Both are watching her intently. _This feels familiar,_ she thinks. 

“You’ve got five seconds.” Sarah prompts. “Five… four…” 

Even if she throws a knife, several knives, could she guarantee she’d hit Sarah’s wrist faster than she could shoot her love’s gem? 

“Three - “ 

Ignoring even that, Lux and Jinx, they’d stop her before she even got the chance. She looks back at the star in Sarah’s hand. 

“Two.” 

She summons a single dagger - that’s all she has energy for. One last look at the three of them. _Useless, she can’t get all three_, and that’s not even considering blue and purple behind them. 

“_One_.” 

Xayah drops her weapon. It dematerialises the second it parts from her hand. Sarah smiles, thin, a mockery of the action. 

“They’re alive. The last time we saw them, they were alive.” Xayah keeps her eyes locked on the gem. That’s all that matters. _If it’s whole, there’s still hope_. Sarah lowers the pistol, but only slightly. 

“_When did you see them last_?” She repeats. 

Xayah grits her teeth. The _scritch_ runs up her jaw. 

“They were fighting Zoe when we were sent away. Neeko was wounded; Ahri told her to run. She stayed to fight Zoe, we followed Neeko here.” 

“Neeko’s here?” Sarah drops the pistol entirely. “_Where_?” 

“Rakan - he - _we_ lost track when she landed in the city.” Sarah’s still holding his gem, Xayah’s eyes flick from it back up to Sarah. “ _Please_.” 

Rakan was always a better tracker than her when he actually focused and put his mind to it, some queer intuition that somehow always got them where they had to be. But Neeko could disguise herself perfectly as a stranger in barely a second, and they had lost her in the Valoran City crowds. _I had blamed him for that. _The thought pangs sharp and biting like teeth digging into her. 

Sarah regards her. Her lips purse. Xayah holds her breath. 

Solemnly she nods. 

“I believe you. Neeko is smart; if she remembers our old haunts at all she’ll find her way to us. If not, I think I know where she would go.” 

Xayah holds out her cupped hands, a silent supplication. Fortune shakes her head, then tucks the gem into her palm, curling her fingers tight over it until Xayah can’t see it anymore. 

“For insurance, you understand.” 

This is starting to seem familiar... even though she technically wasn’t present the first time, Rakan’s memories had been vivid enough to fill her in. She laughs, short and thorny as she draws her hands up to clasp at her own broach. The younger guardians look at her like she’s lost her mind - _maybe she has_. 

Xayah doesn’t stop until her eyes are stinging. 

_She _ had no choice. The empty place beside her where Rakan should be hasn't set in yet. Xayah can't lean on him to defend her where her weaknesses lay any longer. _She’s a failure, wasting his sacrifice_; he had removed one master and she immediately got another one. He's _gone, _and she's _alone._

"I understand." She says, but her lungs feel as though they've collapsed. _You're not much better than Zoe after all, huh, Sarah? _

Her head bows mockingly. The hollow in her heart where Rakan used to be pulses with phantom emotion. 

_She can't fight this_ . Even if she kills Sarah, the other ones will crush his gem. He had been revived before by Zoe, but that was when he still carried his light, his magic, his _soul_. If she took him now he'd be nothing more than a husk of what he had been, a mindless shade, and that was worse than him being dead. 

It had been Zoe’s orders, her own revenge plan, but _they_ had taken him from her, and now she was leashed to them. Why had he done this, when Zoe could pull him back again? Was it because they were surrounded by other Guardians? What had he believed, before he ripped his very Light from himself for her? 

Sweat runs down her neck, flashing skin hot then cold against the night-air. _She'd ignored him, hadn't she?_ Her breath comes faster and shallower as the memories from the past few years resurface, her mental fog sluggishly burning away from her returned - _borrowed_ \- light. She'd _ignored _him, his promises of freedom, his declarations of _I'll always love you_... or she had replied with _shut up_, or _stop it_. Smacked the hand away that only seeked to hold hers, in favour of a dagger. Scowled whenever she felt his soft eyes lingering on her._ How long had he planned this, waited for the right time_? 

_But maybe_ … If he had done this, believing he could save her once and for all, one last time… she would honor him. Even if that empty place where he used to be is a fresh wound torn into her flesh, like something had cracked open her ribcage and swallowed the half he had claimed of her heart, leaving only a numb sensation of _missing_ and _gone_. 

Xayah firms herself, clutching one hand tight in the other as she looks up at Sarah. “I’ll help.” She says, but the words crack as she speaks them. Her fingers blanche, her lips thinning, digging her claws in to remind herself that she's alive. _For him._ Even if she doesn't have a choice anymore. 

She ignores the looks of the baby ones entirely. _They don't matter_ . She strains to get up, but her legs still shake from the zap Jinx had given her. After several seconds of trying to force her quivering muscles to support her weight, she kneels instead, glaring up at Sarah who’s already turned away from her. 

"I'll text Soraka to come get us, Syndra and Ezreal will meet us at yours." Sarah says to Lux, and Xayah closes her eyes, trying to gather what little energy she has left. She won't be able to stand; her legs are shaking from aftershocks, and moving too suddenly made the world around her spin. 

How much had she fought today? Chasing Neeko, that little Lizard using as much magic as she could, Rakan taking the brunt of it- that terrible fall - _Rakan, oh, you idiot, taking the blow for me again- _and pulling so much effort that drained her reserves, fighting Ahri and Neeko and then chasing Neeko again… _ All the while, Rakan was hurt. He hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t noticed. _

Xayah’s ears twitch as she hears Sarah walk away. The hollow part of her where Rakan is supposed to be - _was_ supposed to be - pulls tighter for every step her old teammate takes. 

_ What a cruel streak you've grown, Sarah. You would have been great for Zoe. _ For a second she imagines a world where their positions had been swapped _. I doubt you'd act any different._

__

Xayah clenches her teeth. She has to stand, or they'll drag her with them. They won’t leave her here, Sarah would never risk it. Digging the toes of her right foot into the ground, she stands slowly. Her left leg is numb, like there's nothing there, and she almost collapses. 

Someone catches her. 

For a second her mind spins like an off kilter disk. _Rakan? _Some part of her asks, reaching for the bond to feel his amused laughter. She can almost hear him. _You’re so clumsy honey~ Don't worry, I'll catch you._

But it's not him. There's only the tattered threads of what remains of their bond, and her neck falls lax, head rolling back as her legs entirely give out. There’s no energy left to be angry; all there is now is a deep well of grief. She only needs to glimpse obnoxious, bubble-gum pink to know who caught her. 

Xayah closes her eyes, ears falling from where they've perked up instinctively to hear Rakans laughter. _Young little idiot, _she thinks bitterly. _ Innocent and young and stupid. Blind. If she had the energy, she could stab and gut her right now. Foolish. _

But she doesn't have the energy, so she leans into the help, doesn’t even attempt to support her own body. Lux huffs and repositions, and Jinx moves to help by wrapping Xayah’s other arm over her shoulders with an eye roll and a heavy wince. Together they half-carry, half-drag her away from the playground and more towards the edge of the park, the other star guardians warily in tow, blue carrying the small green one on her back. They pass _him_, still lying gemless on the grass, then _continue moving_. 

Xayah’s muscles stiffen, she pushes her feet against the ground, tearing up chunks of turf as the pink-red duo attempt to keep dragging her towards the sidewalk. 

"I won't leave him." 

Lux and Jinx glance at one another, then at Rakans corpse. Lux’s nose wrinkles, while Jinx outright scowls. Rage stirs again in her stomach; but she’s no fire left to sustain it. They clearly don’t want to touch him; but probably wouldn't be strong enough to carry him anyway. Jinx and herself look the same height, and Lux looks two inches shorter than either of them, so the likelihood they can move him is low. On a good day, she’d struggle to even flip him. _Carrying him over to the van as I am_... 

Xayah shrugs them off too easily for a prisoner, dragging her feet towards Rakan. She makes it before she collapses, sitting next to his head and hovering her hand over his chest. The hole doesn't go all the way through; it's a burnt mess of flesh that smells awful, but it’s lessening as his physical form starts to fade. _Atoms returning to the universe_. Star Guardians rarely left a body to mourn for longer than a day or two. One of the perks of selling your soul to the First Star; free funerals. 

That is, unless she uses her magic to preserve him. 

She… doesn't know if she _can_. The idea of using his own light to keep his corpse fresh seems _wrong_. She leans down to kiss his forehead. _He's starting to go cold_. Xayah pulls her magic tight inside her, coaxing it around the weakened Riku and Saki who now rest within her gem while she places her hands on either side of his wound. Her own gem lightly glows green a moment, then fades. _Her eyes are stinging again_ \- ferociously she rubs her face against her sleeve before the others can spot it. The magic keeping his body preserved will fade with time, but she can keep him temporarily frozen like this, for all the good it will do. 

Lux is pointedly looking away, gnawing on her lip. Has she never seen grief, seen death? Sarah doesn't even bat an eyelash; neither does Purple, and while Blue seems _upset _she isn't crippled by it. Red seems disturbed but not bothered, but perhaps that's just her personality. 

"I've asked Soraka to bring the van. She'll be here soon, don't worry. We aren't leaving your _boy-toy_ behind." Sarah slides her cherry-red cellphone back into her pocket. 

Xayah wants to rip her eyes out. _ It's like when we were on the same team; teasing, now turned to mocking _ . She grits her teeth instead, turns her attention to carefully wrapping Rakans limp feathers around his chest. They feel brittle in her hands, so she's careful. She can't do anything for his wings; they were wounded before this battle, and they are like thin gossamer turning to crinoline where they rest under his back, tattered and covered in a thin sheen of blood. 

They wait for the van. The star guardians are talking quietly behind her, but she doesn’t care to listen. The few beeps of a high pitch horn does however startle her gaze up and away. A white van with decals of bread, pies and a large stick of butter along the side is coming up the road. The left blinker turns on as the van rolls to a stop at the curb, and the driver’s side door opens. 

A tall wispy girl wearing an apron hops out, a thick bun of aquamarine hair resting on top of her head. _ Almost the same colour Rakan’s used to be before Zoe, but a little brighter, so close it’s hard to tell _ . _Must be the guardian Ahri texted_. 

Soraka runs towards them, her hair’s bobbing playfully though her lips are pulled thin. She heals Jinx first, green light stoppering the gash Rakan had made in her side. She barely spares the other guardians a glance before kneeling next to Lulu, gathering her magic into her fingertips before laying a hand on the child’s forehead. 

_Rakan had that gift too_ . The healing light he’d use on her when the wounds and corruption came, shining green as he soaked it into her skin, pressing the wounds closed. She never understood how he did it... Soraka feels brighter than Rakan, though. It's strange. _ Maybe his powers to heal were fading and she hadn’t noticed. That wouldn’t be a surprise. _ Though, when it comes to abilities, some guardians got more favoritism from the first star than others. 

The smaller green guardian sits up, rubs at her eyes while yawning a big ‘O’. The blue shortie with the pig-tails dives at her first, half crushing her with a hug. The other baby guardians gather close too, relieved to see she was alright. 

Xayah rolls her eyes; of course she was alright. _ It was just one of Zoe’s sleep bubbles, it probably would have worn off in a few hours at _ _most_ . Still she couldn’t blame them for being cautious, considering the circumstances, but _still_. 

These ones haven't fought against Zoe yet, let alone _with_ her. Not even Sarah knows her abilities like Xayah does, and Xayah knows Zoe has more secrets and tricks that even _she's_ never seen in her years of service. She brushes Rakans hair from his face, stares down at him. If she doesn't pay attention to the hole where flesh has been burnt away by Lux's Light, she can pretend he's sleeping. 

There’s still several voices speaking in the background, so she's startled when someone kneels next to Rakan. When she looks up it's the new green one, the one they called Soraka. Her brows are furrowed and her hands are glowing as she holds them above Rakan's chest, and Xayah gawks as the healer painstakingly begins to grow back the burnt away flesh. It takes a bit of effort, but Soraka seems determined. 

Her familiar glares at Xayah as Soraka works, and she grimaces at it. Her pain doesn't matter, but the grumpy little lion thing looks like he'll kick her if she tries to move. _Do all healers have grumpy familiars?_ She prods at Riku, feeling him stir, but inevitably slip back into stasis. He's too weak yet, unconscious since the transfer. She isn't his, not really, and it will take him time to wake. 

The others haven't noticed that Soraka is alone with her yet._They're really quite unobservant aren't they_? _How did they survive this long_? She wonders, watching dully as flesh and muscle regrows. Quietly, she takes a pinch of Rakans light alongside her own and reaches out to press it into him, even though his gem is held captive with Sarah, unable to receive it. His light refuses to infuse, running back up her fingertips like it’s scared of it’s previous husk. It tingles like static, makes the hairs on her arms stand on end. Soraka’s hyper focus doesn’t waver - _she hadn't noticed the interference_ \- but her familiar refocused on Xayah with narrowed eyes. 

Then Soraka turns her attention from Rakan to Xayah and takes her wrists in a gentle, yet firm hold. Xayah stares at her with a flabbergasted expression as the green gem examines them closely. 

"Friendly fire?" Soraka says more than asks, tuts disapprovingly at her before healing light spreads through Xayah’s body, permeating from head to toe like a hot drink on a cold day. Xayah watches, brows lowering as she considers Soraka for a long, long moment. 

She could lie, and say it was. But did she have any reason to? The truth would come out, it would give her nothing in the end. She twists her lips - her pain is thinning now. _She misses it_. It reminds her she is _alive_, distracts her from the aching absence, the void of _nothing_ that threatens to send her thoughts into a never-ending spiral. 

"No, not really." She says, watches Soraka freeze-up with a trickling of dark pleasure. Xayah tips her head back, watching the healer from just over her cheeks as Soraka yanks her soft hands away. Then the twisted joy leaves her just as fast. Without the healer’s magic her pain returns, though downgraded to a constant soreness rather than a constant spasming. _A bigger comfort than none_. The healer regards her for a minute, then to Rakan. Her skin turns pale as milk, then she sharply stands and bolts back towards the group. 

Xayah chuckles darkly under her breath, places her hand on Rakan’s still chest. The flesh is static and fragile, barely colder than the air. If she closes her eyes she can remember the thousands of times she's felt his chest move, steady and warm. It makes her chest hurt worse, and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut a few moments to stop the tears from forming in her eyes. 

_At least she can walk on her own now._

Sarah saunters back over to her and gestures sharply with her gun to stand up. Everyone except for the short blue and green guardians help carry Rakan to the van, _easier now that they’re less grossed out, _she supposes. They drop him in the back amongst the Pantheon’s branded cardboard boxes, and Xayah sits without a word next to him, hunched over his body like how he used to guard her whenever she was weakened. 

They arrive after fifteen minutes, throwing open the back doors and making her squint against the sudden, blazing streetlights. There’s a two-story house with peeling yellow paint in view, Lux is opening the front door and kicking over a doorstop so it stays open. 

Sarah is the first to greet her, still grim. This time she doesn’t have the gun. _Small victories_. 

“Get out. We’re finally here.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, here's me and my friend idolbird's powerpoint with all the updated lore if people are interested! https: //docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wOsPnr7JBUufQcMteBl_5FwX4pBS0XnfrIqmA-mFRWE/edit#slide=id.p1 (Just erase the space) 
> 
> Thanks again!!! See you all soon!!!!


	3. "This Just Can't Be Right -"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team finally gathers to debrief, and Lux has doubts about her role as leader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for when we talk about Zoe, please see slide 29 of the previously posted slideshow! That youtube comment that's cited really sums her up perfectly, I think!!  
Thanks to everybody who left kudos or a comment!! Who knows what will happen from here on out? ; )

\--------------------------

  


_Is this really okay_ ? 

Lux twirls a strand of bubble-gum pink hair around her finger, alternates between the winding and tapping an index finger on the quartz counters of the kitchen island. Janna still is towel drying her hair, pacing closer to the window, but everyone else sits on chairs, island stools and in Soraka’s case, an ottoman dragged in from the living room. Sarah is glaring hard enough down at her cell phone’s screen to break the glass, every so often she taps at it to keep the screen from powering off. By the looks of things, Lux guesses Ahri still isn’t responding. 

The front door opens, then slams shut. 

“I’m hoooome!” Jinx yells from the entryway, and Lux hears the _thumps_ of her kicking off her unlaced sneakers as they hit the wall. “They had a special on for students tonight. Lucky us, right? You all owe me ten bucks each, cuz now I’m broke. _You’re all welcome_.” She enters the kitchen with two overflowing bags of styrofoam containers and chinese-take out boxes, drops them on the kitchen island and takes the stool next to Lux. 

“Wait. Did you all shower already?” 

Lux nods along with the rest of the seated star guardians - besides Lulu, who to her credit _had_ taken a bath but currently was too focused on drawing with her crayons to pay much attention to much else. It’d been a constant stream of people going in and out of either of the house’s bathrooms for the past hour, ultimately returning to the kitchen in pajamas or baggy t-shirts and sweats. Lux had offered use of her spare clothes, and Lulu had offered to make more onesies, but both Soraka and Sarah had declined and redressed in the same clothes as earlier. 

Jinx swears, then hops back off the stool. 

“There better be hot water left! Oh, and don’t start eating without me!!” She darts up the stairs to the bathroom she shared with Lux. _ For someone who barely weighs 100 pounds, she has the heaviest footsteps in the house _ . 

In the absence of the loudest, most talkative member, the kitchen seems more quiet than before. Tension seeps back in, the air is thick as jello, it makes Lux want to tear her hair out at the roots. 

Rather than throw a chair, she starts tearing open the knots on the plastic bags. Poppy silently starts to help, unstacking the take out containers and opening the packs of plastic knives and chopsticks. Janna takes a stack of plates out of the cupboard and sets one in front of each chair. 

The doorbell rings, Janna places the last plate and drifts out to answer it. Lux hears a male voice, speaking something fast to Janna, then there’s a feminine laugh from someone _who’s definitely not Janna_, before the door shuts. _Ezreal and Syndra are finally here._ Her heart feels lighter already. _Ezreal can lighten the mood, surely_. _Though… Syndra being here might cancel that out_. 

The last two of their group enter the kitchen in sweatpants and t-shirts, Ezreal’s hair is still damp, slightly sticking to his forehead. Lux wants to walk up to him and brush it away, but clasps her hands in her lap instead. He seems to notice her stare and flashes her a bright, white smile and she immediately looks down to her hands, face flashing hot. 

“Here.” Syndra drops the duffle bag slung over her shoulder to the floor. “I grabbed the things you asked for.” 

“Thanks. I know you had to leave your lecture early for this.” Sarah pushes back her chair and goes to dig through the bag. She pulls out two sets of clothes and throws one at Soraka. 

“No problem. The Prof was being boring anyway… I’ve been reading chapters ahead of that lecture all week. I’m not missing anything important.” Syndra takes her seat on the other side of Lulu, and looks down at her drawing with interest. Janna returns to the table and appears to take a seat as far away as possible from Syndra while still being able to claim counter space. 

“You all ordered chinese food? Sweet!” Ezreal slides in and takes the empty stool next to Lux. She can feel her own heart beating in her chest. Sarah and Soraka return, now in their own casual grey sweatpants and red T while Soraka is in her green pajama-onsie that Lulu had sewn for her two weeks ago. 

More stamping down the stairs, Jinx, hair still dripping and in mismatched pajamas sprints back to the kitchen. 

“I said not without me!!” She skids to a stop; glaring at the stool now occupied by Ezreal. 

“You’re in my spot.” She says, and Ezreal laughs a little sheepishly. 

“Uh, there’s a seat free still next to Poppy - “ He replies, and Jinx puffs out her cheeks, fuming. She looks like she wants to fight it out more, but Poppy pats the high stool and she goes to take that seat, grumbling under her breath. 

Finally they are all gathered. The space where Ahri should be is sorely felt _ . What should I do in this situation? Ahri should be here to lead everyone, not me _ . Lux remembers asking Ahri to do the same barely a month ago. _ She hadn’t agreed then, so she probably wouldn’t agree now even with the current circumstances _ . 

She was the leader. She should know what to do, how to guide them. Those bubbles had ended up harmless, but that couldn’t have been the end of it. Such a specific attack couldn’t have been blind. 

Lux looks down at the boxes. She can’t bring herself to take any food from the group servings onto her plate. 

Lulu, Poppy and Jinx are tearing into the chinese food. Poppy and Jinx are currently fighting over the sweet-and-sour chicken balls with their chopsticks, and Lulu happily picks at her children’s combo of boneless short-ribs and fried rice. Syndra is slurping her noodles with no reservations. 

“Not hungry?” Ezreal nudges her with his elbow. _That smile again_. Lux’s stomach flutters for a brief moment, and then the memories come back and it shrivels. 

“...Not really.” the thought of eating at all makes her stomach turn, but not in a good way. Ezreal picks up the container of sour pork and takes a few pieces out with his fork for his own plate, then offers it to her. All she can smell is burnt flesh, the fading heat from her own outheld hands. 

“Sorry, no thank you.” She tries to swallow her stomach; she feels like she’s going to vomit. 

“Suit yourself.” Ezreal shrugs and puts the container back in the center of the table. 

“Hey, Luxy - “ Jinx is watching her now, and since her average volume is half-shouting, everyone else’s attention immediately dropped on her. Jinx holds up the styrofoam bowl with the plastic lid. “How about the wonton soup? Easier on your stomach if you’re not feeling well~” Then, she smirks at Ezreal; “Luxy hates pork, you know. But she loves - “ 

“I just don’t have an appetite - for soup or otherwise. Sorry.” Lux says. Jinx’s expression sours and she slaps the bowl back onto the table. 

The tension is getting worse, not better. What had they done, deciding to all group together like this? Maybe Ahri had been right about keeping the groups separate. Lux scans the whole table. Soraka is picking at the stirfry, playing with it more so than eating, but Sarah’s and Janna’s plate are also empty, having never taken portions for themselves. _I’m not the only one feeling the strain_. 

Lux looks out the kitchen door, to the empty hall. 

_What about that star guardian_ ? They had just left her in the living room, along with the… _body_. 

“Should we offer something to…uh, our guest?” She asks. 

She doesn’t know the name of the mysterious Guardian not-Guardian that Sarah seems to know, now that she's thinking about it. But she does know the name of that boy - _no, he was too old to be a boy_ \- that _man_ on the couch. Her stomach turns at the memory of the smell of burnt meat and the fear in his eyes. 

She clasps her hands harder in her lap, ignoring how her nails bit into her skin. _Rakan_. His name was going to haunt her. Hearing that woman call out, terrified -- void creatures didn’t have feelings, monsters made from chaos shouldn’t have emotions. Right? 

_ I'd go easy on you, but orders are orders and I can't exactly say no _ . 

Did he ever have a choice? Lux wonders, watching. Janna is still refusing to acknowledge Syndra, face grave. Everyone else seems uncertain except Ezreal, who is slurping up chow mein with a raised eyebrow as he glances between them all. Jinx is drooped backwards onto her chair, rubbing her stomach. _Eating too much too fast, as always_. 

Poppy and Lulu are unphased. It’s the first time they’ve seen someone who looks so much like them in such a state._ Dying in front of them_. But, even when awake Lulu could best be described as ‘in a constant state of daydreaming’, and Poppy saw the world strictly in black and white. _They are evil, we are good. They attacked us, so they deserved it._

What had Rakan said about Poppy? _ So loyal, diving to rescue your team. I wonder how you'd feel if they left you to die _ ? 

Lux swallows again, the bile in her gut rises up. Is that what happened to him? She doesn’t want to ask the Guardian in the living room, the one sitting with his corpse. The look on the woman’s face had been distant, like she was seeing somewhere else. 

_ I wonder what number you are. Her second team? Her third? _ ? 

She turns her gaze to Sarah. What had she said, weeks back at their slumber party? 

_ You need to understand I would never hurt another Guardian, not ever _ . She had promised, and Lux had trusted her. But Lux had also seen Sarah take the gem off that corpse, and threaten to destroy it. 

The abrupt realisation feels like an ice-cube dropped down her back. _They know nothing about the other team_. Their past experiences are shrouded in shadow. The idea that Sarah may have lied to her about one thing is not reassuring, what else are they hiding? 

She’s snapped out of her thoughts by Ezreal speaking. 

“What guest? Is there a new guardian?” He asks, spinning more chow mein around his chopsticks. “What’s she like?” He asks, glancing between everyone. Ezreal was not the most observant, and as a teenage boy he probably hyper focused immediately onto the food. 

“An older one, actually.” Sarah says, lips twisting. “Older than you, and older than me. We thought she died a long time ago.” The redhead blows her hair out of her eyes and sweeps it behind her ear, pushes out her chair then leaves the kitchen without another word. Ezreal watches her go, frowning. 

“That doesn’t actually help!” He calls after her, but the front door opening and closing with a slam is his only reply. Ezreal sighs, stands up and carefully sets his plate in the sink. “What’s got her so mysterious tonight?” After he turns around he winks at the others. Nobody returns his cheery smile. “Are any of you gonna fill me in, or…?” 

“She’s empty.” Lulu has resumed colouring, her empty plate stacked atop Janna’s. She’s trying to cover a sauce stain by colouring heavier with the purple crayon, and it doesn’t seem to be working. 

Janna and Syndra meet eyes a moment, then return to ignoring each other. 

“Empty, huh? Then we should bring her some food!” Ez looks to Lux, gestures towards the cupboards helplessly. “Uh… where?” 

“Top right.” Lux replies, and Ezreal retrieves the last clean plate. He spoons a bit of everything into a messy pile and fills up a cup with water from the sink. “Is our new friend shy?” 

He’s already leaving the kitchen, not waiting for the reply. Jinx watches him leave, grinning, leaning half out of her chair for a better view of the hall. 

Lux jumps up, knocks over her chair. “Ez, that - “ She follows him up the hall but halts before the living room archway. 

Ez taps the glass lightly against the doorframe as a knock. Lux cringes, awaiting the explosion. 

“Oh,” he says, “looks like she’s asleep. Woah!! Another star bro too?! Sarah didn’t mention that!” 

_Asleep_ ? 

She steels herself, and peeks her head into the living room. Sure enough, the pink star guardian is curled up on the end of their patchy couch, the man - _her partner? Boyfriend? Brother??_ \- is lying supine with his head and shoulders on her lap. Her cheek is leaning on the back-rest, and her eyes are closed. The dusty throw-quilt they normally kept folded over the back of the couch is laid over his body; it hides most of the blood stains, the torn clothes. 

Ezreal lays the plate and glass on their coffee table, it makes a light sound against the wood. He looks about to turn away, but then he _hesitates_. His blond eyebrows furrow, and he leans toward the couch. His hand reaches, fingers pointing out tentatively to touch the man’s chest. _Wait - !_ Lux thinks, opening her mouth to protest. _Stop!_

Time slows down. The woman’s eyes flick open, sharp, her angled pupils are slits the colour of dark matter. She swipes out with her fingers that were _definitely_ claws, nails long and sharp and black with shadow that seeps up just past her wrist. They sink into Ezreal’s forearm, snagging him like thorns on a rose - but then her eyes catch on his face and her eyes widen.  
  
Ezreal is just as frozen, stuck in that brief moment before he would yelp in pain. His eyes are big and blue, and the woman’s eyes dart up to the streak of his hair and then to his true-blue gem, then over to the food he’d set on the table. Her claws release, the dark fades from her skin. There are deep red marks welling blood where they’d sunk in.  
  


“Don’t _touch_ him.” Her voice is partway between a growl and a whisper, though Lux can sense something else, _a pang of regret_? 

  
“He’s brittle, now.”  
  


“Brittle?” Ezreal parrots, suddenly far too interested to be concerned  
about his wrist. Ruby droplets splatter onto their grey star-rug.  
  


“Yes.” The woman doesn’t elaborate, eyes darting towards the food and then to Lux, narrowing on the pink of her gem before she closes them again. She rests her hand over the man’s forehead, almost protectively. “Don’t bother bringing me food. I’ll waste away eventually regardless.”  
  


_Waste away, _ Lux thinks. _That sounds… horrible. _But Ezreal is oblivious - both to the state of the man and the earlier events at the park.

“Why?” He asks, he looks to Lux with worried, bright eyes, and she rapidly shakes her head. _Did he think she knew the answer_? Just as fast he turns back to the woman, tone pleading. “We can talk to Soraka! She’s our healer, surely she can - “ 

“ - You remind me of him.” The woman says, opening one eye to look at Ezreal with a strange look. Almost fondness, but not quite. _Wistful? Nostalgia_? “Always talking, never shuts up, and too curious for his own good.”  
  
She leans her cheek back against the couch, closing her eyes once more. Ezreal studies the male guardian as the woman brushes her fingers through his hair. Then his jaw goes slack, realisation dawning on his face, flipping to horror. His wide eyes snap back to Lux. 

_Alright, no. Not here. _ Lux grabs Ezreal by his unharmed wrist and pulls him away, past the entryway, into the hall. He’s blinking rapidly, mouth gaping like a fish. Blood pearls drip off his hand onto the floor, and Ezreal stares briefly at his arm, then from where they came, then back to Lux. 

“_Lux_.” He whispers hastily in a half-hush. “Is there a _corpse_ in your living room?” 

“It’s a long story.” She says, because it _is_. 

“_Lux_. Lux, Lux - _Lux_, there is a _corpse _in your living room being _cuddled_.” He says, as though she’s blind. She feels a little blind, honestly - she has no clue what’s going on, either. 

“She’s got history with Sarah.” Lux says a little desperately. “And keep your voice down! She can probably hear you!” 

“ - And his gem is gone.” Ezreal says, staring past her. 

“Sarah’s got it.” Lux replies, lower. “She threatened to destroy it.” 

Ezreal double-takes at her. “She _what?_” 

“Shhh!” 

He winces, glancing over at the door before looking back at her. "Lux, destroying a gem seems pretty serious to me! And her arm… she’s not corrupted, is she?" 

“I don’t know. I mean, her gem is clear, she looks fine - “ 

“ -Her hand - !” 

“ - _Most of the time_.” 

Ezreal is jiggling his hand, biting his lower lip. 

“What happened today?” 

Lux tugs Ezreal away by the arm, leads him to the front door. 

“I think we need to have a group meeting, but Sarah needs to be there.” Peering out through the window panes of the front door revealed the red guardian to be sitting on the front porch, staring off over the neighbourhood. Lux’s hand hesitates over the doorknob; _ Ahri should be here, she’d know what words to say, how to best plan what to do next _ . She sighs, drops her hand. 

Ezreal places his hand lightly on her shoulder. Lux almost jumps; their eyes meet. He’s smiling encouragingly at her, and she immediately drops her gaze, face burning. 

“Don’t worry. We can do this! Go get Sarah back.” He says, “I’ll tell the others we’re going to have a meeting.” 

“Thanks Ezreal. Stay in the kitchen. We probably should stay far away from the living room.” Lux turns the doorknob, but doesn’t yet pull it open. 

“Call me Ez.” He winks again, and trots back down the hall. Butterflies are infecting her stomach; leaving airlight feelings where there was once tight strain. 

Lux opens the door and steps outside, stands awkwardly with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Sarah doesn’t turn to acknowledge her. 

“Um, Sarah - “ 

“I know. You probably have questions.” 

The once-blue gem is in her hand. It’s clouded over now, darkened and empty. There’s a crack running through it, a fissure splitting to the core. 

_Did I do that? What happens when you crack a gem?_ She couldn’t remember if he’d had that during their fight, before he… 

Lux swallows. 

“W-we’re going to have a meeting. In the kitchen.” She stammers, “We need to talk about today, and what we - “ 

“I know.” The gem disappears back into her pocket. “I’m ready.” 

_I wish Ahri was here_ . Lux twiddles her fingers, holds open the door and _waits_. Sarah is slow to stand, keeps her gaze out at the horizon. The stars are strangely bright tonight, for a city sky-scape. 

“Um, Sarah, do you think there’s much harm in… maybe… giving her that gem back?“ Lux gulps. Sarah’s eyes jump to regard her, and she almost shivers from the chill. 

“If she gets this now, we’ll all die in our sleep.” Sarah pauses. “ _Probably_.” 

She pushes past Lux back into the house. Lux follows, tries not to peek into the living room as they passed the archway. 

Their teammates quieten as she returns to the kitchen. Jinx pats the stool next to her, and Lux joins her, hands jittery. Her feet twitch where they’re resting on the stool’s rungs. Ezreal gives her a thumbs up; his arm is no longer bloody. _Soraka must have healed him up_. Lux takes a deep breath. 

“Today, we learned there’d be an attack on the city park, so some of us went to investigate. Bubbles rained from the sky; we destroyed them, but touching one sends you into a deep sleep. After that, we were attacked by two star-guardians, a guy and girl, except they were dark. Corrupted. I… _We_....” She corrects herself, squeezes her own hands together. 

“ - _defeated_, him. But he did something to the other one, to her gem. They’re both in the living room now. They mentioned a third guardian, but we haven’t seen her yet. Sarah, you know them, right?” 

The older star guardian nods. 

“Many years ago Ahri and I were on a different team of star guardians. Me, her, Xayah, Rakan and Neeko. There was _nothing_ we couldn’t handle. Then, after two years together, we were attacked by an ancient star guardian.” Sarah takes a breath, and Syndra scowls. The remainder of the table sits, rapt, waiting for her to continue. Even Jinx is sitting still, keeping quiet. 

“Her name is Zoe. We as a team were… unprepared. Ahri ordered a retreat - three of us got left behind. We thought they were dead. For years we - “ Sarah shakes her head, takes a long sip from her water glass. The kitchen stays silent. Sarah eventually continues. 

“The night of the slumber party, Ahri left to go look for our third lost member. Neeko. _Our yellow star_. Xayah says she’s alive, that both her _and_ Ahri are alive. Though… even with her gem purified, I doubt Xayah will be helpful to us for much longer.” 

Lux thinks back _ . Back at the park… Lulu pale and shaking from a nightmare had uttered; ‘she’s coming’. _ The little green star was prophetic, even if she didn’t realise it. Her drawings, her dreams, all had value, even if they were frustratingly vague sometimes. 

“Zoe’s coming back for us.” Lux echos, hollow. 

Sarah simply nods. 

Jinx blows a raspberry. “Phfff!! How bad could it be?? There’s ten of us now. What could possibly go wrong? You saw how we exploded Baron at the summer camp. She can’t be _that_ much worse than him.” 

“Zoe is the immortal embodiment of cosmic nihilism. Countless star guardians have been destroyed, had their gems shattered, stolen, repurposed, or corrupted with despair. Every one she takes, she becomes stronger. This is the enemy Ahri went alone to fight. It was her choice.” Syndra speaks coolly, logically. _She doesn’t seem concerned, _Lux thinks. On the contrary, she seems almost _excited_. But this was a different excitement than the wild glee Jinx gets from the glitter and explosions of a fight. This was _personal_. 

Lux can hear the sound of the clock ticking on the wall. She looks over; nine PM. Janna silently slips out of her dining chair and drifts over to close the kitchen curtains. 

“What happens if she takes our gems?” Poppy looks serious, as always. To the right of her, Lulu starts to colour on a blank sheet of paper, discarding her previous drawing to the side. From where she sits, Lux can see what looks like a child in a dark purple leotard, long, Rapunzel hair in purple and blue. There’s three stars to the right of her, in green, blue and pink. The stain from the chinese food is partially covering the green star. Purple crayon has been marked over it, over the blue one in lesser amounts. The pink one is outlined in purple, but the inside is untouched. 

Reflexively she finds her hand drifting to her own star-gem hanging around her neck. _Herself, Jinx, Poppy, Lulu, Janna… _they’ve been living together, fighting together for a year. Ever since signing the contract, she’d never been without her gem. Janna had pushed for them to wear protective yellow covers on their stones, and to never be without them. She never said _why_. Luckily, just as their familiars could use their bodies like a personal hidey-hole, they could change their gem’s form when not in combat, shrinking and wearing them as rings, or a choker - _as Jinx liked to do_ \- or a hairclip. It felt wrong to not have it touching her skin, she couldn’t imagine being able to forget it. 

_ Maybe she should have asked more questions instead of just signing the contract _ . 

Back in the park, that man - _Rakan, _she corrects herself, _the body has a name _\- had a crack running through his gem, hadn’t he? Splitting through the darkened blue and mint green with an indigo dark as a dead galaxy. That colour, _she’d seen it before_, coating Rakan with shadow as he attacked them, and spreading like an infection up Xayah’s arm after she had swiped at Ezreal. But in the living room her gem had been whole, green and without a fracture. _Where had that dark magic came from, if not from a crack_? 

“I’m not sure what Zoe does with them.” Sarah says, slowly. “Me and Ahri have been trying to find out for _years_. But on that planet… we saw Xayah die. I _know_ we did. Even a star guardian can’t survive getting sk - “ She cuts herself off, her eyes flick briefly over to Lulu and Poppy. 

“ - injured like that. Whatever Zoe did to her, to _them_, she has powers we can’t imagine.” 

Lulu shivers. 

Sarah fidgets in her chair - _she never fidgets_, Lux thinks. _ She’s probably regretting getting us involved. Or hiding something. _ Rakan had said they had all been left behind, but... 

_...Sarah had only mentioned Xayah getting hurt. _

__

_ “_ What happened to the other two then?” Jinx asks, and Lux is half-tempted to pinch her thigh under the table. _Jinx has beaten me to the punch, as always_. But Lulu shouldn’t have to hear such things. 

Ezreal and Poppy lean forward with their elbows on the table, rapt. Janna and Soraka are sitting still as statues, vaguely troubled expressions on their faces. Syndra is a blank slate; _patient, maybe, or bored_. Perhaps she already knew this story. 

“He went back for her.” 

Sarah suddenly becomes very interested in her the table in front of her. She’s speaking slow, practically stilted. “He shouldn’t have, but he did. Ahri and I couldn’t find Neeko. It was either leave, or die. _We had no choice_.” 

Lux isn’t sure whether Sarah is trying to convince them, or herself._What had Ahri said to her before_? ‘ _Before you judge, remember that I am your future’_. 

“Zoe stopped her advancing after that fight. When it was clear we wouldn’t be attacked, we went back. Ahri found decorative stars from their outfits, shreds of their clothes. No shards from their gem. We searched nearby planets, scoured this galaxy. When the First Star granted us new members, I believed that confirmed their deaths. Ahri never accepted it though.” 

“They attacked us.” Poppy says. “So they’re on the bad side now, right? Zoe converted them, turned them evil.” She’s already standing, holding up her arm already to summon her hammer. 

“Relax, Hammer-time.” Jinx guides Poppy’s arm back down, but the shorter guardian is looking out the kitchen door with a hunger for _justice_ in her eyes. 

“Her gem has been purified, and as such has been freed from Zoe’s control. Personal feelings aside, she should no longer be a threat to us.” Janna says, and Lux can feel a sense of calm trickle over the room. Janna had that effect sometimes, strangely enough. Like a gentle brook over stones, looking at a Japanese rock garden, or a nice breeze on a hot day. 

Poppy sits back down on her stool, but she’s pouting as she asks; “What do you mean, _purified_? Why can’t Soraka just heal the corruption away?” 

Soraka startles when everyone looks to her, but shakes her head no. 

“This is not the same as void-sickness. Healing magic won’t fix it.” 

Following up on this, Syndra then takes her ring off and it transforms back into a purple, four pointed gem. She holds it out to the table like she’s ensuring the whole group sees. 

“Our gems reflect our souls, our beings. Star guardians are born of hope, are given a purpose. Without it, we wither. We lose our way, we risk corruption.” Syndra shrugs. “There are ways to cure it but… she was pretty far gone. I’m impressed that he managed to purify her gem, he must have been very determined.” 

Lux thinks back on the fight, and the way Rakan had gripped Xayah’s gem, his fingers slippery with his own blood, not even able to form words anymore. Determined wouldn’t be the word she’d use. _Desperate, perhaps, would be a better choice_. 

Ezreal picks at his arm, fiddles with the sleeve. Lux spots a tiny dot of red on the cuff before he rolls it up. 

“Purified or not, she’s acting _crazy_ in there. She knows he’s dead, right? Was she like that _before_ she died, or is this a new thing?” 

Syndra, Janna and Sarah swap looks. Lux finds herself bopping between watching either of them, waiting on who’d speak first. 

“She’s acting crazier now?? That’s hilarious, I gotta see - !” Jinx jumps up out of her seat, but Lux snatches her hand, interlocking their fingers before she could race away. 

“Please sit back down. The meeting’s not done yet.” Lux pleads, and Jinx’s face flushes as red as her hair. _ Was she embarrassed from being called out in front of everyone? Normally she loves even negative attention _ . Jinx snatches her own hand away, but begrudgingly sits back onto the stool. 

“I’m surprised Xayah’s not worse than she is.” Sarah admits then, quietly. She slides the male’s gem out of her pocket and places it gently on the table with a _clink_. There’s still specks of dried blood on it. Lux turns her gaze away. “She wasn’t like this before.” 

“So what? She got a little necromancied and now she’s mad? Big deal.” Jinx has her arms crossed, starts leaning back in the chair so only the back two legs are touching the floor. 

“No. Her and Rakan, they’re..._connected_.” 

“Dating?” Lux asks, and suddenly Jinx and Ezreal become ten times more interested. 

“Yes. _No_. Not exactly. More than that.” Sarah’s face twists. She looks to Syndra as if for assistance, but the purple guardian just shrugs. 

“When we were a team, they decided to bond their soul gems together.” Sarah finally blurts, her words half-stumble in her rush. “Ahri _told_ them not to do it. We all knew it was a bad idea, but they did it anyway.” 

_Bonded their gems_ … Lux looks back at the lone stone resting on the quartz of the counter. _ How lonely is it for his remains to be with them now, rather than in the hands of Xayah _ ? As she watches, black fluid beads from the crack in the gem. 

Soraka is still sitting quiet, observing. She reaches for the gem once the drops weep out, and cups it in her hands. Green light surrounds the stone a moment, then fades. The crack remains, still glistening with the dark matter. Her face abruptly turns pallid, and she drops it back onto the counter like it’s scalded her. Lulu jumps half across the counter to catch it, her nose crinkling in concentration as she traces the ridges of the jagged crack with her small fingers. 

“It’s not recommended. Too many side effects.” Syndra speaks like she’s advertising a store-product rather than the souls of living creatures. “If one of the paired members die, it nearly guarantees death for the remaining one. If you’re lucky, you just go mad instead.” 

“That’s dumb. What’s the point of it then?” Jinx asks, “It doubles your chance of death!” 

“_They_ thought it was worth it. For what it’s worth, they did change a lot after it was done. Even if they tried to keep it a secret from us, it was immediately obvious what had happened.” 

“He misses her.” Lulu lays the gem back down. 

Lux hears a sharp inhale. Sarah and Syndra snap their attention to the door; Sarah snatches the gem back off the table, shoving it somewhere out of sight in her pockets. Lux looks over her shoulder, she’s not surprised to see Xayah standing like a zombie in the doorway, still in ripped, blood stained clothes. 

“Next time you gossip about someone, keep your voices down. We can hear you.” 

Lux’s face goes red-hot at the call-out, she fiddles her thumbs, shame-faced. When she dares to glance up she sees Soraka, Poppy and Ezreal donning a similar sheepish expression. The others however, look remarkably indifferent. _On guard_. 

Xayah looks so much paler than she did even a half hour ago. There’s shadows under her eyes. She moves stiffly, like her body was unfamiliar to her, or like every movement hurt. 

“_Not that it’s your business_, but we did it because it felt _good_. So, so _good_ \- “ Her eyes are half-lidded, she hugs herself like she’s protecting against a chill. Her nails dig in like before with Ezreal into her own upper arms. Lux winces as she sees red pinpricks bead onto her skin, but nobody goes to stop her. Xayah continues; “We became one. I felt what he felt. We fought even better together after. It was… _everything_.” 

There’s a smudge on the counter from where the dark liquid had oozed from the gem. Xayah stares at it, entranced. After several long moments she walks over to the table, presses her fingers onto the smear. Pulls her fingertips away stained black, and brings them to her mouth. Her eyes close as she presses them to her lips. 

The rest of their group are staring; Poppy is biting her lip while her right fist opens and closes on nothing. 

“Xayah,” Janna clears her throat and cuts the awkward silence. “What did Zoe do to you both?” 

Xayah jolts. She doesn’t reply at first, looking at each of them in turn with narrowed pupils. 

“Rakan would know more about this than me.” She eventually states. 

“Zoe’s coming here.” Janna presses. “Rakan took your corruption away. If she wins, she gets you back just like before. Anything you know could be a help.” 

Xayah blinks, languidly. Ignoring Janna entirely, she faces Soraka instead; 

“Show me your hands.” 

The healer startles. Brings them to her chest. 

“I - “ 

Xayah lashes out fast as a striking cobra, grabs both of Soraka’s wrists; the action pulls the taller girl half over the kitchen island. Ezreal yells out in surprise, Poppy summons her hammer out of the air in less than a blink. 

Soraka’s palms are black. Not stained as if by that inky substance, but flakey as dead, peeling skin, like what you'd get from a bad burn. Janna holds her hand up in warning, and Poppy stops mid-swing. 

“You don’t hide it as well as Rakan does." Xayah says, then covers Soraka's palms gently with her own. Her brows furrow as though she's thinking about something. Everyone holds their breath. 

Nothing happens. Lux looks to her right and left; the other guardians seem to be just as perplexed. 

“Ah. Sorry. I’m a green star, but I never learned.” Xayah releases Soraka’s hands. “My love makes it look easy.” 

Soraka gently smiles, and motions to Xayah’s upper arms, to her own oozing scratches. 

“May I?” 

Xayah glances down at the wounds, looking vaguely surprised. She shakes her head dismissively. 

“Oh. Don’t worry, Rakan can heal me later.” 

Soraka shoots a concerned look to the rest of the Guardians, but Xayah has already stopped paying attention again. Jinx giggles, has to cover her own mouth to stifle them. 

“If you help us kill Zoe, we’ll help you get Rakan back.” Sarah doesn’t look like she’s kidding. _But such a thing was impossible, right? She had to be lying_. 

Xayah doesn’t react to her words, and instead wanders out of the room, leaving Sarah’s statement hanging just as Janna’s. 

Sarah’s eyebrows knit together while a deep frown etches onto her face. Jinx starts to slap her own knee as she breaks out into laughter, tickled by the show. Judging by everyone else’s strained looks, she’s the only one who’d found it amusing. 

“What now?” Lux asks, ignoring Jinx’s giggles. Janna’s earlier work had come undone, everyone had returned to sitting on the edge of their seats. 

Syndra slides the paper Lulu was doodling on out from under the younger guardian’s hands, and places it in front of Sarah. There’s a garden, bushes, flowers and long grass. _It’s overgrown, _Lux thinks. There’s a fountain spouting water there too, but Lulu had drawn cracks in it with black crayon, and drew green vines crawling up the basin. There’s a figure drawn amongst the grass, peach and green and orange. 

_The final lost star guardian_ . 

Sarah grins, triumphant. She grabs the paper and laughs, brings it to her lips and kisses it. 

“Now, we find Neeko.” 

  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :eyes:


	4. "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xayah remembers some things she'd rather not, and it gnaws at her. Luckily, the baby guardians are a good distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowee, this chapter is 7,600 words!! Thank you for continuing to follow this fic! We're getting close to the end, so, hold onto your hats! 

  


\-----------

The upstairs bathroom is still steamy and warm from the previous showers. The linen shelf has been nearly picked clean, used towels piled dangerously high in the hamper. Still, Xayah scavenges two body-sized towels, two hand towels and three face cloths. There’s a hard wood comb resting on the sink, she cleans the old hairs out of it and adds it to the pile. There’s an unopened bar of soap on the shelves under the sink; she grabs that too. The mirror reflects her, a stranger, light pink and green and haggard. She averts her eyes. 

There’s a closet in the hallway; she digs through it and adds two fluffy blankets to the pile. Then, downstairs. Xayah spies a mop and bucket in the laundry room at the far end of the hall on the main floor. She grabs the bucket, rinses it out with hot water and soap several times, then leaves it in the sink to fill. 

The other star guardians are still chatting in the kitchen. She passes the door twice bringing the linens and water to the living room, and doesn’t bother to look in. _Rakan’s waiting for her, afterall_. 

Everything is distant, dull. Her feet are heavy, and her mind is reeling; so overfull she might as well be thinking nothing at all. 

But the weight of the bucket in her hands is real, and she makes it back to the living room without spilling a drop. 

“I’m back.” She traces Rakan’s cheek with her fingers. He’s cold, but she’ll warm him up soon. “Sorry it took so long for me to find everything.” 

_Rakan’s sleeping still_ . It’d take him a while sometimes to wake back up. This, she remembers clearly. He’s died innumerable times more than herself, against other star guardians they’ve hunted, blocking damage meant for her, or just from foul play by Zoe whenever she was feeling frustrated. 

But Zoe always brought him back, after! And he was always _fine_. Memories from before start to prickle at her. 

_ She had stopped looking, hadn’t she? After fights to see if he was okay. He always came back, eventually, when Zoe needed them both _ . _She didn’t need to ask him, didn’t care to_ \- 

Xayah cuts it off. Thoughts like that made her throat feel like it would close over. So she ignores them. 

_She hadn’t cared before, so why now_ ? 

_No_ . _That wasn’t her, right_? Her fingers dig into her palms, but she stops before she draws blood. _Not now_. She needs to clean him. 

His clothes are ripped and stained. She removes them piece by piece. The gloves, the gauntlets. Stardust, the lot of it. He’s not awake to use his magic to transform new clothes, so she’ll need to find him something else after she’s done. 

His vest is easy. It’s split down the back, so she can just tug it off of him in one motion. Some of his feathers are sticking to it, crusty and sticky with dark blood. She discards it. His belt unbuckles and slides out, his greaves have the buckles loosened and undone, easy. Pants take more effort, and she can feel the pull in her lower back as she tugs them off, but she manages that too, then unfolds one of the blankets and covers him from the waist down. 

_Rakan’s skin is so smooth_ . It’s a new experience for her - _ had it been so long since she’s touched him like this, examined him so closely? _ Outside from the pale scars that litter his skin, the dark star on his chest and forehead. There’s no trace of his earlier injury. Soraka’s handiwork is surprisingly thorough. She dips a facecloth in the bucket of hot water, wrings it out. Washes his face in soft strokes, extra gentle around the corners of his eyes and lips. 

_"My love, kiss me. I miss you"_ . 

_She scoffs at his words_ \- _Rakan’s being stupid and sappy again_, _it’d be so much easier to work alone_ \- _ but she needs him to track down the orange guardian, the final one from the party they’d been hunting _ . _Zoe wouldn’t be happy if any escaped_. _ She sighs; roughly grabs the scruff of his neck, pushes down hard then nips a kiss to the corner of his mouth, making sure to catch a bit of his cheek on her teeth when she pulls away _ . _ Melancholy eyes of smelted gold meet her own, and she hears what sounds like a nail scratching lightly against stone. _

Her breath hitches. Dips the cloth again; this time scrubs the fresh bar of soap against it until it bubbles. 

_ Rakan has his feathers puffed out, as if it intimidated the immortal monster that held their leash. _

_“She needs a few days to heal! We’re not go -”_

_ Zoe swings her hand like she’s serving in tennis; a tiny comet of dark magic shoots through Rakan’s throat and his body drops like a puppet with its strings cut, protests stopped dead in their tracks. His body spasms a few seconds, clawing at his trachea, then quickly stills. Something alien tugs at her core then, a desperate twinging on rusted strings that cuts off soon after he stops moving. Xayah watches, impassive. What did the idiot think would happen? Zoe had no use for toys that talked back. The god-child grins, looks to her, scanning for a response. Another moment later and she pouts. _

_“Really? You’re no fun. I did too good of a job with you_ . _ Not like you care buuuut, he’ll be waiting for you on the dwarf green planet, Tuula.” _

__

_ A snap of her fingers and his body disappears through a portal that closes the moment he’s passed through. Zoe spins away, long hair wrapping around her slender body as she giggles. Another snappy two-finger point and a portal opens up beside her. Zoe hovers over it, sinking in slowly as her expression flops from child-like glee to a poisonous glower. _

_“Get what I need, or next time I won’t bring him back_ .” 

Xayah’s arms start to shake. _Focus, _she thinks _. Focus on the task_. 

His torso had the majority of the mess. She scrubs the black off his arms, his fingers. Has to dip the cloth into the water several times before she gets through his chest and stomach. It’s pale, near translucent where she scrubs him, but it soaks up the heat from the cloth, and when she touches him after it’s almost enough to pretend. 

She pats him dry with a hand towel, then drapes it over his upper body, covering most of his stomach, _as if he cared about being exposed there_. Her hand drifts to rest over the left side of his chest. _He’s so warm_. Xayah lays her head briefly down to the right of his tattoo’d star, presses her ear flat. 

Nothing. He’s as empty as she is. 

_“Do you think she knows that we’re taking these?”_

__

_ Rakan asks, holding up the gem to examine it. Biting them open was the easiest way, but the shape sometimes made it difficult. Xayah struggled with it, so she had him crack them open for her instead. They didn’t want the flavor to fade before they could take it all in, after all, and the gems were so fickle. You had to crack them just right, or they got ruined. Those ones, they gave to their familiars. _

_ Xayah glanced up from where she was chewing on the leftover crystal of the pink one he’d just fed to her. She liked the crunch. _

_“Probably.”_

_ She’d replied, unconcerned. Rakan glanced at her. She liked the red and pink ones best, but she also had a fondness - a love, maybe - for the green and blue. Possibly something from back then, from him, now that she’s thinking about it. He cracked the blue gem carefully with his teeth, clearly enjoying the bursting flavor of the iridescent essence that dripped onto his tongue, before holding it between his lips and stooping to pass it to between her own. He very rarely ate them anymore, she had noticed, preferring to sate her appetite instead - especially if they were blue, pink, or red. She’d trained him well. _

_ She took it from him, making a content chirp that she knows will send Rakan into throes of satisfaction, and sure enough he responds with a happy rumbling from his chest as he cracked open a tiny green one, the last of the day. His eyes close as it rests briefly on his tongue, before leaning down to feed it to her. _

_ I don’t mind this that much at all, Xayah thinks as she curls up into the warmth of his side, licking the iridescent drops from her fingertips. _

_This is when he’s at his best._

His blood isn’t mixing well with the water; after cleaning his upper body the water is stained, like she’s been cleaning used paint-brushes rather than her soulmate. She stands, waits for the room to stop spinning, then carries the bucket out to the laundry room, dumps it down the sink drain, and fills it again. 

The laundry door opens behind her. Xayah jumps, hunching her shoulders, guilty as if she was caught doing something she shouldn’t be. It’s only the purple one, Janna, with an overflowing basket of laundry. She doesn’t seem surprised at her presence. Still Xayah turns off the faucet and grabs the bucket, hugging it to her chest. 

“Do you need any help?” She sounds non-judgemental. Her words float, easy and unobtrusive as the wind magic she wields. Janna opens the lid of the top-loading washer and starts separating the twisted up towels and facecloths before dropping them into the machine. 

Xayah shakes her head in a quick jerk. _Washing him was a task meant for her and her alone_. The water in the bucket sloshes a little over the side at the action. She stops, staring embarrassed at the spill on the floor. 

Janna doesn’t even look up from the laundry. “Don’t worry, just leave it. I’ll get it after.” She removes some wrinkly shirts and shorts from the drier with a tut - _from the loud reds of the fabric and tiny fit_ _Xayah assumes it’s Jinx’s_ \- and places them on a hanger that she then hangs on a closet rod installed across the width of the small laundry room. 

_He needs new clothes_ . That’s what she’d forgotten. He can’t weave any new ones out of magic, not right now. She swallows to wet her throat. 

“Do you have any spare clothes?” She half-mumbles. The purple one continues her switching over of the laundry, perhaps she hadn’t heard her? 

Before she can repeat the question, Janna replies; 

“For you or for Rakan?” 

She flinches. She wasn’t prepared to hear his name aloud. 

“Both.” 

Janna’s high ponytail bobs as she hums. 

“I’ll find something in your sizes.” 

“Thank you.” The word sticks in its unfamiliarity, makes her awkward. Silence resettles between them, and she hurries back away with the steaming bucket of water. 

Xayah takes long steps up the hall, trying to prevent any more sloshing. There’s still murmurings of some discussion from the kitchen as she passes \- talks she has no interest to eavesdrop in. _Rakan is waiting_. Bucket placed carefully on the floor, she drops back to her knees. Work to be done. 

Next is his lower half. The facecloth sopping and soapy, she cleans over his thighs, his privates. The thick corded muscles of his legs, his feet. It’s not too crusted with blood, his pants and greaves having protected most of his shins. 

_ The desolate planet she’d died on was good for three things; it was quiet, it was private, and it was covered with caves. There was no shortage of places they could use for shelter. They’d come because she’d deserved a little reward - the last fight had her eliminate a trio of older guardians who had been in hiding for a decade. Zoe had been very pleased, and gave them permission for ‘alone’ time, giggling with razor-pointed teeth before phase hopping away. _

__

_ So far, it'd been a waste of her time. Rakan had become less and less responsive to her hints; she was beginning to wonder if he came back with even less of a brain than originally every time Zoe revived him. It would certainly make sense, given how he kept throwing himself into every fight like an idiot. _

__

_“Rakan.”_

__

_ He finally looks at her, which is just what she needed. Xayah captures his chin in her hand, leaning in to press a rough kiss to his cheekbone. His eyes closed and he leans into the affection like a starved animal _ . _ Good. Rakan always did need some coaxing now to take her, an annoying new quirk of his, but once he got started he was so eager to please _ . __

__

_ She settled on his lap, tugging at his clothes impatiently. They faded at her touch, flaking away and fading as he leaned in to bite at her ears. She twitched them away and pinched his side, making him jump. Not in charge anymore, she had thought at him with irritation. _

Xayah takes a slow, shaky breath in while she counts to ten. Again she pats him dry, then takes one of the blankets and pulls it up over him, tucking it around his waist. There’s only his feathers left, that and his back. He’s still here. She lays her palms flat on his healed chest, holds her breath. Concentrates. Her own gem glows, a stupid, pure green - _ when had it last been just green? Before they had bonded, when she was alone _ \- and she feels a bit of her reserves drain to preserve him. 

She’s overdoing it, maybe. But she can’t take the risk of him disappearing. _What had he done, when it was her in his care_? She clenched her eyes shut and tries to think. 

_ Her body is stiff and cold, like she’s been floating in ice water for hours. She blinks, bleary and foggy. Gold irises stare at her, luminescent against the dark sky. Then there’s a sound of pure relief mixed with joy, a kind of crackling half-sob, as she finds herself being hugged tight against a warm broad front. It felt wrong, grating, rubbing the wrong way on her skin _ . 

_ But this was Rakan. Holding her so tight she fears she’ll break a rib. _

_So why did it feel so bad_ ? 

Zoe had done something to her. That had to be the answer. Even here now with his corpse left her lonesome and wanting, chasing the remnants of their bond with a hunger she hadn’t remembered feeling when corrupt. _That had to have been all Zoe, right_? 

“Mieli, I need to turn you, okay?” She has his feathers left to clean, his back still to wash. She places her hands on his side nearest the inside of the couch and pulls him towards her. He’s heavy, moving him doubly hard now he’s all limp weight, stiff and awkward to turn. She takes a deep breath, pulls harder. Rolling him onto his side first, then onto his tummy while she hears what sounds like tearing paper. It makes her wince, but she continues. 

There’s a new tightness between her shoulders once he’s on his stomach, a pulsing burn in her lower back, but she manages to do it. She’s a little out of breath, but she runs her hands over his back, ears twitching when she hears the crinkling. 

The feathers of his cape are thin, stiff. They come off as she touches them, brittle and crackling as spun sugar. Dark blood is dried onto them like a crust, and the areas where dark matter had dripped from his spine left other feathers stained and still sticky. 

She gingerly lifts the cape up. Wide scars line his pale skin, criss crossing in an angry, fresh red. Some had time to heal to be pinker, while others were faded even more to white. Down by his coccyx she lightly traces his tail-feathers. They’re bent, like they’ve been crushed, and when she tries to move them from side to side they resist the movement entirely. _Healed back the wrong way._

There’s a larger wound, like that from a whip from where Neeko had hit him with ribbons of light. 

They’re scabbed over - Soraka’s magic again, no doubt - but where she runs one over with the wet cloth little beads of black seeps out from under the scab, like fresh blood but _not_. Too thick, and iridescent like ink or oil. 

Xayah sponges over the back first, then lays a towel over it and moves his cape to rest back over him. This part would take the longest. 

_ She still lets him preen her feathers whenever they have a rare moment of downtime. He doesn’t sing anymore when he does it, which is how she prefers it. Silence is golden, after all. Rakan’s fingers are dextrous as they run over her sore back, straightening up her wings while also soothing them with healing light. He hasn’t sapped life force in combat for a while, so it’s source had to be from him. That was fine too; she was the more valuable asset to Zoe, she needed to be kept in good condition. _

_ “Done! You’re looking beautiful.”_

_ Rakan finally says, and leans over her shoulder for a kiss. He’s a little short of breath. She pushes him away with the back of her hand. _

_ “Not now.”_

_ “Okay.”_

_ He sits next to her instead, quiet, hunched over his knees. She looks out of the corner of her eye; his feathers are slack, getting ragged. She can spot grains of red-dirt caught in his feather-barbs that she knows is from three planets ago, when they fought against a red-green star guardian duo. Their gems had been particularly delicious - the ones despairing with loss had a strong tang to them, pulsing in her mouth with delectable sour long after she’d swallowed them. Their flavours were mixed together in a delightful fusion...Her mouth starts to water at the memory. _

__

_ Rakan had given them to her mechanically, not reacting as he usually did to their flavour as he splits them. _

_ “You don’t like sour?”_

_ She had asked - not that she minded, it meant more for her. Rakan had grimaced, swept his greasy hair back behind an ear with his hand. There’s a superficial crack running through his gem, reaching down through a third of its length. The idiot got it damaged in a fight, most likely, she thinks. Eventually Rakan responded. _

_“I can’t taste it_ .” 

The feathers are blurry, she blinks and rubs her eyes against her sleeve. Her tongue is dry, no matter how much she swallows, and the taste of sour lingers there like a ghost. Xayah shakes her head, her gem throbs while she starts the process of trying to cleanse his cape’s feathers. 

Each one was so wide and longer than her own plumes, but they didn’t seem like it now. They’re raggedy and threadbare, thinned fluff clumped up with black and dried blood. Halfway down the length strips appear to be torn out, leaving the dark blues patchy and dull. This was from more than just their recent fights, from months or even years in the making. _Neglect, or from his own fingers_? Even as she dwells on it, tries combing back through their years and years alone together under Zoe, she can’t easily recall. _Later_, she promises, _if she thinks about it now she wouldn’t be able to finish_. Many of his feathers are broken off at the shaft, some even going as far down as snapping at the base of the calamus, but that too is a mystery she cannot explain. 

What had she been doing for those long years? Had she just not looked at him at all? _Or rather… it was the opposite_. Xayah shuts her eyes. Vague memories flash against the back of her eyelids like a silent film, and her fingers trail up to trace around one of her own small feathers that poke out from her upper arms. She sharply plucks it out; flinches at the pain of it, but it helps clear her head. 

_The job_ , she reminds herself. _He needs me right now_. 

The cover over his cape that lined up with where his chest wound was appears burnt, seared black from light magic. That wasn’t salvageable, no soaking in water or soft combing would fix it. 

His true wings are trapped, she knows, sealed away in his magic pocket that kept them safe from outside influence. Their capes are more resilient forms of their own wings, though the two are intrinsically linked. As fighters, it wouldn’t do to have the most vulnerable part of them out in the open at all times. 

She hasn't seen his true wings in a long time. Maybe a quick flash when he charms in battle, but that was it. The faded falsity of her own, translucent, had always shown more than his. When was the last time he wore that vulnerability before her? Or rather, when was the last time he had trusted her to do so? It feels like ages since she's seen them, but… his tattered feathers make her heart tighten like it’s caught in a vise. 

_Are they as hurt as these feathers are? Had she never noticed_ ? But she had never preened him back, either. Did she deserve to see them? Deserve to _touch_ them? 

They crinkle under her fingertips, flake into pieces that float off of him like snow. She can’t groom his proper wings. _Probably never will again_. 

“I’m sorry - “ 

Her heart is stuttering, skipping every second beat, then every fifth as it races in her throat. Every time she attempts to swallow it, she has to fight the urge to vomit instead. 

“ - I’m sorry, I’m sorry - “ Her voice sputters and cuts off on her tongue. His feathers fall free from his cape as she touches them, no matter how gentle she sponges warm water over them. 

The very air she’s breathing is choking her, and she can’t find the strength to speak through it. Tears drop onto his cape as she runs the cloth over him, and she wipes them away with the final dry towel as fast as they fall. 

_I was weak. I didn’t protect you_ . 

She can almost hear him in the back of her mind, his voice like dropping a warm blanket over her shoulders; ( _That's my job, Miella. I have you. Don't worry about me.)_

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? _She hadn’t worried, hadn’t_ \- 

A blaring of static hits her ears and she twitches. _From the kitchen_. For a few seconds it sounds like a radio being tuned to search for a station, but then someone shouts “ _Jinx! Stop it _-!” And the radio is turned back off. 

  
There’s scuffling from the kitchen, then something gets dropped, shatters, and someone lets out a wordless yelp. _Young,_ Xayah thinks tiredly, reaching up to rub at her eyes as she folds her ears down to ignore the noises. There’s thumping as people run up the stairs, and she scowls down at the stained cloth in her hands. 

Not feeling Rakan reach to her through their bond to comfort her is disconcerting. Still, the magic at her fingertips remains sharp and ready. She looks down a minute at her own gem, stares a little _too_ long. 

It’s pulsing, a second heart. 

It takes her a long moment to push the desire away. It’s itchy, this temptation she can’t risk to scratch. _The distractions are welcome_ . 

Xayah can’t risk _anything _right now, even if his absence is tearing her apart. 

There’s a task she needs to complete. She’s not willing to risk that she might hurt him even further than she already has, so she carefully gathers the shreds of the vanes that have fallen away at her touch, trying to ignore how brittle they feel as she does so and places them in a neat pile to the side. Somehow rolling him so he returns to resting on his back isn’t as hard as the first time. _The heat must have loosened his muscles, made him easier to roll_, she guesses. The blanket is unfolded and drooped back over his body. 

There’s a brief moment of silence from the kitchen that is quickly broken by loud laughter, mixed with more yelling. _Wonderful_. She thinks as she rolls her eyes,_ it’s easy to forget that they’re so young. _

Xayah lifts her hands to comb her hair over her drooped ears then pauses as she sees that the water and Rakan’s blood has stained them like ink from a broken pen. She rubs them against a semi-damp towel with no success. Her frown deepens. 

She slides back onto the couch, positions so that Rakan’s head is resting on her again. She combs her fingers through his hair, watches dispassionately as little streaks of black mix into the stains on his hair that her simple rinses with the face-cloth would not remove. The wounds on his ears still drip blood sluggishly, and she rubs them gently as though to distract him from the pain he can no longer feel. 

_Please wake up soon. Your absence hurts more than I remember._

He has been dead longer before, she remembers. She hadn’t cared before, but the ache of where he used to be is so vivid now that she cannot think of anything else. She lets her eyes close, focusing on the fading warmth that she’s rubbed into his skin. It wasn’t the same as he usually was; Rakan was a furnace, warm and large enough to wrap her in heat. The feeling of him being cold is unusual, and it feels terribly wrong to her, a flaw in the universe. 

Something taps on her shoulder. 

“Yo, you alive?” 

Xayah snaps alert at the voice, shirking back and over the body, instinctively her feathers flare up on end, magic readying at her fingertips to conjure. 

Jinx raises an eyebrow at her and Xayah falters. The younger red gem pops her hip, gives her an unimpressed stare with just a _pinch_ of teen attitude. 

“Jumpy, aren’t ya?” Jinx asks, obviously not truly interested in the answer. Xayah can relate. It’s been a long time since she’s talked to another guardian without stabbing them immediately afterwards. Jinx isn’t making it easy. 

“- What are you doing?” If the redhead had gum to pop, Xayah has no doubt she would have done it. 

Xayah pauses, hand pressed lightly into Rakan’s shoulder blade under his cape. 

“I was washing him.” She finally says. Jinx raises an eyebrow, looking to Rakan for a moment. Her eyes track his feathers, narrowing ever so slightly at the ragged look of them. Xayah presses her lips together, looks down at the floor. 

“That’s dumb. We’re going to bury him, aren’t we? That’s why you’re stopping him from turning into sparkles, or whatever Janna said.” 

Xayah reels back like she’s just been slapped. _You’ve never lost a teammate, have you? _The realization is startling, almost. She doesn’t say anything for a second, too busy wrapping her head around the idea. 

“...No.” She says, finally. “He’s going to wake up any minute now. I want him to be comfortable when he does.” He’d know then, her apology. 

Jinx covers her mouth with her hand while her eyes crinkle. 

“Sure. I get my chest bursted through_ aaaaaaall_ the time and wake straight back up.” 

“He has! Zoe always brings him back. _Us_ back.” 

Jinx couldn’t mean it. What did she know about Zoe’s magic, about the mortality of a star guardian? 

“Uh huh. Listen, your crazy is cute and all, but I wanna ask about something more important. Wind mom’s being lame and won’t tell me.” 

“...Will it make you leave?” 

Jinx’s eyes light up like fireworks. Xayah sighs. _Stabbing her would probably not be a solution here_. 

“Fine. What is it?” 

Jinx grins, showing all her teeth. 

“You and bird-boy. How did you do it?” 

“Do what?” 

Her smile spreads wider, some illicit excitement with the forbidden. 

“Link your _gems_.” 

Xayah shrinks back over his body. _ A larger, built form pressed against her; bated breath and the sensation of pressure on the cusp of pleasure and torment. Kisses, the clink of two gems until they sink in, flesh coiled tight about each other until he’s all she could feel, all she needed to _ \- 

“You’re too young.” She states, throat dry. They had been young too, but not nearly as green as these babies. They’d fought the void as solo acts for years, found each other as a fluke, some luck from the universe. Then it’d been them versus everything for many years before finding Ahri. Her hand seeks his hand, even though the fingers are stiff and pre-curled, she slips them together. 

Jinx’s nose crinkles. 

“I can make my own decisions - and you don’t look that much older than me!” 

“With that blue-gem boy?” 

If it was just out of their small group, the only other boy in their group was that blond twink. 

Jinx openly gags, covers her mouth with a hand to stop the urging. 

“Yuck! Gross! _No_!!” 

This was more interesting. _It almost outweighs having to talk to her_, Xayah thinks. If it isn’t some outside person, then it would have to be one of the other girls. 

“Who, then?” 

Briefly Jinx glances back towards the hall, before her attention recenters. 

“You don’t have to be lovers to do it, right?” 

_Oh_ . 

“I mean… technically no, but - “ 

“ - great! Good, so we can do it, no problem. So tell me, do I just smack our rocks together or is it more of a ‘grind into dust and mix’ sort of situation…? Ooh! Do we snort it, after?” 

Xayah winces - the thought of grinding their pure-coloured gems into a mixed dust made even her balk. 

“No. That’s - “ 

“ - is kissing involved? I don’t mind, per-sey, but I think maybe she’d be a bit put-off by that, you know?” 

“Jinx.” Xayah tries again, firmly. “It’s not about - “ 

“ - Cause I know her brother had that ‘thing’ with his college buddy in his freshman year, so she’s cool with that sort of stuff, but I don’t want things to get weird with us after, right? We _are_ bffs after all - “ 

“_Jinx_.” 

“What??” 

“If you’re just doing it for fun, _don’t_.” There’s a bone-deep tiredness setting in now, and all she desires is to have an hour of silence to curl up and sleep. If this girl was just doing it all for a joke, then nothing she could say would satisfy her anyway. 

The red-gem girl is tiny, but she plants her stocking-ed feet wide on the floor and juts out her chin. 

“You said it felt good, and that we’d fight better together after. Sounds worth it to me!” 

“Trust me; you don’t want to do it. You can’t undo it if you regret it.” 

Jinx clearly looks at the body a moment. Her cheeks puff out. 

“So you regret it?” 

Her hand tightens on his. _No, never_, was her first response. But, then, if not for their link, their story would have ended on that quiet planet. If Zoe could have gotten any part of them, it would have just been husks of their forms, a ghost of their power. For better or for worse, their bond enabled the imprisonment of both of them. 

Jinx juts her chin towards Rakan. 

“I bet he does.” 

_Each time past the first, he’d never said anything_ . Xayah scans her memories for something different; he’d always reappear, sometimes forming from his gem in a flash of light, other times out of a portal Zoe would snap into existence. 

Gilded irises always regarded her, first whenever he’d revive. Colder and colder each time. Near the end, they hardly lit up at all when he saw her, a dun bronze. 

He still loved her, though, even if he regretted soul bonding with her. 

_Right_ ? _He gave me his light, he wanted me to be free_ \- 

Jinx has continued talking, her foot tapping along with her animated gestures. Xayah doesn’t hear her over the ringing in her ears. 

The gem clasped over her heart has renewed its throbbing, worse than a doubly strong heartbeat. _She can’t concentrate with it like this_. Her fingers have renewed their craving; she tempers her breathing, then rips her stargem off her cape with her free hand. Her knuckles turn white where she’s clenching it in her hand, then start to stain darker, grey leeching slow to a purple so dark it’s near-black. 

Whatever Jinx is saying stops short. She takes a step back. 

“ -I get it, it’s a sex thing. I won’t ask anymore, jeez. No need to get so worked up.” Jinx winks, then turns on her heels. She waves over her shoulder as she leaves. 

The skin burns where it’s turned, a toxic rot she’s familiar with. Xayah counts again, only gets to three, to five, then tries again and again until she can get to ten without picturing a dark, cracked gem. 

_ That wasn’t from an injury. Not one she can recall. That crack was from something else, wasn’t it? _

No, this wasn’t the plan. Xayah breathes in, breathes out. Slowly her hand returns to normal colour. _I need to stay focused._

She needs…_ what did she need again_? 

_Clothes. Fresh water. _ She needs to keep track of what she needs to do, or she’ll fall apart. Janna had yet to bring her any clothes for him. She gently moves him off her lap, wedges her gem between his curled fingers and stands. Picks up the bucket with the old water, takes a step towards the door, then stops. Xayah tries to shake her feathers out but only ends up ruffling them anxiously. It shouldn’t be this hard to focus, but it is. Her thoughts are scattered, and her steps might as well be through deeply dug trenches. She looks over her shoulder back towards the couch. 

_ It isn’t as though he’s going to go anywhere. He’ll still be here when I get back. It’ll only be a minute. _

The danger of leaving him alone obviously isn’t high; Xayah doubts that the young guardians here will do anything, and Sarah - 

\- _Well. Sarah wouldn’t dare_. Not if Xayah had something to stab her with about it. Besides, the nostalgic memories clearly existed for her, more than she had expected. 

She walks out to the hall while keeping her eyes over her shoulder, and something slams into her from the side. Water sloshes out of the bucket all over the hall, a high pitched voice shrieks in alarm. 

“Oh god, I’m sorry! Uh, don’t worry, I’ll just get a mop, uhm - “ 

It’s the blond-blue-gem boy. He stutters and stammers in front of her, and tt takes her a second to realize he’s holding something, thankfully not food this time. 

“Janna told me to bring you this.” He says and holds out the bundle towards her. “Sorry it took so long! I had to dig through my own stuff, but my clothes probably won’t fit.” He laughs awkwardly, still holding out the pile with puppy-dog eyes. 

Xayah puts him out of his misery and takes the clothes. 

“Thank you.” 

Somehow he managed to keep them dry after the collision, though there’s a few darker drops of water staining the shirt on the top of the pile. Xayah returns to the couch, separating the clothes into two outfits on the coffee table. Besides the black pair of plain boxers, the rest seems to be of female make. One outfit is a blue tunic dress with bell sleeves, accompanied by black leggings. Xayah frowns; _no slot for her tail_. The second is a slim white t-shirt with a cute kitten stencil on the breast pocket, accompanied by velvety green sweatpants with a pull-string waist that cinched in at the ankles. There were also two sets of socks - as if they needed those - and underwear, as well as a sports bra for herself. 

Inexplicably Ezreal has followed her awkwardly into the living room, watching her inspect the clothes as if waiting for a response. 

“S-sorry. Soraka gave the white t-shirt and the sweat-pants… she’s the tallest here. Hopefully they fit him right.” 

“They’ll do.” 

She kneels on the edge of the couch, stretches the t-shirt first in her hands, strategies flitting gracelessly through her head. Dressing him would be much harder than undressing him, that was clear. 

From behind her, Ezreal clears his throat. 

“Can I help?” 

Xayah takes pause. Her back still feels tight from where she had struggled to flip him. _He was no Soraka, but…_

“Okay.” 

For such a small star-guardian, he was stronger than he appeared. With Ezreal’s assistance she pulls Rakan up into a sitting position, and manages to tug the t-shirt over his head and get his arms through the sleeves without much issue. The cape takes longer to roll up and pull through the neck-hole of the shirt, but they manage it. 

Ezreal doesn’t seem to notice his feathers - or if he did, he doesn’t say anything. 

She’s pulling the blanket off his lower half when he finally speaks. 

“Is it lonely?” The boy asks. His eyes cast to the food he brought earlier, cold and neglected on the far end of the coffee table. She still hasn't touched it, but her fasting doesn't seem to bother him. _Not like how it would bother Rakan._

Xayah contemplates the words, debating whether it was worth answering. She didn't really have anything to lose; the fact that he even tried to talk to her after she clawed him open was admirable, considering, and she had no real reason not to. “I cannot say it isn’t, because it is. But it is deeper than that.” 

She summons a feather dagger, and the boy doesn’t flinch, unphased by the danger she wields. Impressed, Xayah cuts a hole in the boxers for Rakan’s tail, then slides the blanket off his lower half. 

Ezreal goes a little pink in the face at that, but he doesn’t flinch away like Lux and Jinx had. 

_Interesting_ . 

She works the underwear and pants up each leg, and Ezreal helped her with turning him back and forth until she had both pulled up and adjusted. Getting his tail through the holes she cut in the underwear and the pants was the hardest part. The feathers there were stiff and not nearly as flexible as she was used to, but they manage it. 

Finally clothed, she pulls the blanket over his front. _There, my love. Now whenever you return, you’ll be comfortable_. She dips down to kiss his cheek, then lifts her head, examining Ezreal. He’s sat himself on the arm of the nearby armchair, arms folded across his chest as he watches her. Noticing her attention, he immediately looks over at the clock hung on the far wall. His cheeks are still red as a pomegranate, and he briefly chews at the tip of his thumb. 

“Now that he’s cleaned up, he’s quite handsome, huh? Uh, for a corpse, I mean.” Ezreal states. Then freezes, as his brain catches up with his mouth. 

“Not like that!! I just mean, I can see why you like him??” He uncrosses his arms, then crosses them again with the reverse arm now on top. “Not that appearance is everything, but as a fellow blue-gem I’m sure he had a shining personality too!” 

Xayah’s expression pinches in. Ezreal gulps. 

“_Has_. Has a shining personality. Listen, ok - “ 

At this point his ears have turned red too, standing out against his blond hair. He pitters off awkwardly while fiddling with his sleeve, and Xayah thinks him done before he clears his throat and speaks again. 

“I was alone for a while, when I first signed the contract.” He says after a brief silence. “I know the feeling. I can’t say it’ll get better because you're here with all of us, but I can say that I hope your pain lessens with time. Everyone’s glad you’re here, I think. Sarah too. Even after everything.” He nods, seemingly pleased with his small speech. 

He hops off the arm chair, gathers all the old towels and heads to the archway. Drops them all on the spilled water, and swirls them around with his feet. 

“Take care of yourself too, okay?” He insists, and picks up the towels before he too leaves. 

Xayah tilts her head as he moves, watching with lowered eyelids. As soon as he's out of the room his shoulders loosens up and he moves a bit more spiritedly. 

Xayah turns to look at the food then turns back to Rakan, rubbing at his ears with a wet cloth to get the blood out of the tiny feathers and velvet fluff there. _She didn’t deserve to take care of herself. _She was no longer Zoe's, but she was just as trapped. Rakan had made a great sacrifice to save her, perhaps not even out of love but obligation, _yet his light is warm in her chest_. 

These people are not hers. They had taken him from her. He had died twice because of this group, once to the older ones who had abandoned them and once more to the young ones. But Zoe had technically killed him, too. More than any of the others combined. 

_And so had she._

Xayah shut her eyes tight, ears lowering as she leaned over him to press another kiss to the mark on his forehead. 

_Will you forgive me? I don't think I deserve your forgiveness._

But he doesn’t respond, even though she could _imagine_ him speaking to reassure her, as he had so many times before. 

The silence is deafening. 

The other guardians are gathering again, running up and down the stairs and hall dressed in different clothes. Xayah turns away. She doesn’t need to know what they’re up to, not when Rakan should return soon. She climbs back onto the couch and curls back up around where he rests on her lap. 

_Soon. She’d apologise as soon as he returned_ . 

\--+--+-- 

Her ears twitch as she hears the front door open, waking her from where she'd lain resting half on Rakan's chest. His hair is curled around her fingers still from where she had been combing through it repetitively. 

She lifts her head, feeling dazed. The ringing in her ears was faded to a buzzing background noise, and their bond pulsed lowly with pangs of something that was similar to pain, but not quite. 

There were more footsteps and the door opened and closed loudly yet again._They're leaving, _Xayah realises. _Are they really going to leave me here alone?_ Her thoughts are bleary, like she's been asleep for a long time even though a quick glance to the clock reveals it’d been an hour at most. 

But no. There's a peek of blue moving back and forth from the entryway to the kitchen; the short blue one stayed then, Poppy or Pippy or something. 

_But why are they leaving? _ Truly, it could be multiple things, but she doubted that they would need six - _or had there been seven? -_ guardians for a lot of the options she had thought of. But Zoe had been coming also, had been on her way. She strokes her thumb over Rakan’s eyebrow.  
_What would you do?_

The memories are still hazy, but she knows him as she knows herself. Rakan, pure and blue and brilliant, would have been right behind them. A strengthening force, shielding and sacrificing as he dashed in and out of the fight, healing as he went. 

After, he had been a sharp acidic green, soft to her like gentle poison and sharper than a blade to everyone else. Still, he had been with her, shielding and fighting and _sacrificing _for her, bleeding out and coming back again. His skin scarred, his wings tattered and his love unflinching. 

So she thinks about it. 

Xayah separates from him for the final time, carefully slipping a pillow under his head for support and kissing his cheek goodbye as she retrieves her gem from his hand with a final pulse of stabilising green. _I’ll be back soon. _He will still be here, waiting for when she returns. 

She waits until Poppy’s patrolling has her out of sight in the kitchen, then sprints up the hall to the front door, opens and closes it with a slam. Thankfully, Xayah had always been a quick flier, and as she launches into the sky she sees the smaller blue guardian run out onto the lawn, fist shaking up at the sky. Poppy crouches, winding up to leap into the air and follow, but at this rate it’s too late; Poppy will never catch up to her in the air. 

The path she flies is familiar, even in the long years that had separated _then_ and _now_. She could find her way even with her eyes closed. She sighs with relief as her wings spread wide, the panging of her gem has abated for now, here above the city, headed towards the clouds gathering thick and dark in the distance, blotting out the starlight. 

She was going _home_. 

_I’ve got something I need to do, love. I’ll see you again soon._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHHHHHH >.< This one was a long one to blast. Please yell at us, it makes us write faster~ <3. Thanks again, and see you all soon! 


	5. "I'm Not Afraid of Anything Anymore"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes come back to haunt the team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. This chapter is 9138 words. We're sorry. Also, things got longer than expected so... this isn't the last chapter. Next chapter will probably be it, though! Sorry again that this one is a bit slow coming, we'll try to focus hard to finish this up ASAP! 
> 
> We're always open to suggestions, especially about questions you guys have or things you want to have happen. ;) So... Who knows... maybe we might write more for this au's timeline in the future? 
> 
> Lastly, we really hope you enjoy!!!

  
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The old safe-house Sarah had led them to stood solitary and alone on a hill at the edge of the city. It gave a moderate amount of privacy._The opposite of our town house_, Lux thinks, _ but maybe the land was cheaper out here_. It’s shrouded with trees, though it seems bad weather at some point had uprooted one of the tall spruce trees and knocked it into the right side of the house. The damage couldn’t be significant, because they had just _left_ it there. 

No sign so far of this mysterious ‘Neeko’ guardian. 

They wade through knee length grass to get to the porch, and are greeted by a door coated with peeling paint. It was stiff and hard to open, but Sarah manages it after slamming her shoulder against it a few times. 

_It feels like entering a tomb. _ Sarah with her flashlight leads the way, and the rest of the Guardians follow suit in a wary line. 

The air inside is musty and thick with dust. Their steps stirred the dirt and dust at their feet, made footprints like they were wandering through frost. 

“It’s been many years.” Sarah says, speaking lowly. “We stopped paying for the power bill. But we kept paying for the land… just in case.” 

_They never gave up hope. How many years has it been, four or five_ ? Lux worries her lip with her teeth. Their group all stands together in what must have been the living room. White sheets covering all the furniture makes them look like ghosts. 

“We split up and search the house. Lux, Jinx, Lulu and Janna, check the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. Me and Soraka can look on the ground floor, Syndra and Ezreal should go comb the backyard. If you see anything, anything at all, call out. Okay?” 

Everyone nods. Janna hands out the extra flashlights; despite not needing one, Lux takes one anyway. 

They split up; Lux heads upstairs with Jinx close behind her. A sweep of the hallway shows a large number of doors. They didn’t seem to need to share bedrooms, not like her own group of star guardians. 

Lux pads through a dusty bedroom the closest to the staircase. _Must be the master bedroom_, she thinks, judging by its size and the double bed. The room itself is empty of any long lost star guardians, but still fairly furnished, frozen in time and forgotten. 

_ The covers are pulled back. There’s still a pile of laundry in the hamper. _ She’s not about to pick through a several-years-old pile of dirty clothes to test this theory, but she bets there’s male and female clothing mixed together in the bin. 

_It’s none of my business. But…._

Lux slowly opens the nightstand. It makes a terrible creaking noise, old wood complaining at being moved for the first time in years. There's only one thing in it that catches her eye, and she takes the box carefully, blowing the dust off of it. 

It's a wooden box, hand carved diligently and about a half-foot squared in size. There are wood flakes on the bottom of the drawer, next to the tools that are obviously aged and were used to carve it. The hinge is old and doesn't want to open, but eventually it snaps open with a clapping noise. She pulls her fingers back just in time before it can catch them, but it's _what's inside _that has her staring with wide eyes. 

Little glass cases, flowers preserved inside. They still glow faintly, and she carefully takes them each out to examine them. Then her eyes catch on what was under them. 

A tiny box, covered in decaying velvet. 

"Oh," Lux breathes, lifting it carefully. The hinge on this one is very rusty, worn from use - like the owner had opened and closed it a lot, wearing the hinge away. It opens easily, and Lux stares inside at the ring she hadn't expected to be inside. _A gold band with an unclouded diamond..._

She closes the box fast and puts it back, she has to use a bit of force to get the drawer to re-close, and the momentum knocks over the tiny carved figurines standing on top of the nightstand. 

“I’m sorry!” Lux apologises aloud to an empty room, then sheepishly blushes while she rights the figures into standing back up. 

There’s more wood-carved objects on the large double-dresser. One of which is a longer rectangular box that, when she opens it, is filled with papers covered with writing in runes she cannot translate, yellowed with age. 

Lux closes the bigger box, takes a step away. The room feels heavy around her shoulders and her head, the moth-eaten curtains flutter over the broken window. She feels like she's intruding; that they would know she was here. 

_ Desperation reflected in gold, the smell of burning feathers and flesh in the air _ \- Lux covers her mouth with a hand. Her empty stomach tenses up into her throat. The bathroom. 

She runs into the ensuite, dry heaving over the sink until tears start to gather in her eyes. Despite having not eaten for several hours, she still tastes vomit. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand with only a slight tinge of disgust. _It wasn’t doing it for her_. Maybe there’s tissue in here somewhere? Nothing on the toilet, or on the toilet roll holder. She pulls back the mirror; a pink and white box greets her, colours slightly runny from humidity. The sides are ripped open. 

Lux slams the mirror door shut. Her eyes trail a minute towards the wastebasket, but drags them back away. 

_You took him from me; _ The words echo in her ears. 

_Im sorry, _ Lux wants to respond, though only her own reflection would hear it. _I didn't know - how could I have known?_

The room mocks her. The bed with the moldy covers and the broken window. The tiny figurines that Rakan or Xayah must have carved sitting around the room, a little post it note of love. _They must have taken time to make_. The box with the forgotten engagement band, the writing on the inside she couldn’t decipher. 

It's engraved in her mind as it was engraved in that ring. Tarnished in time. They had never gotten a chance. Her stomach twists up to fill her lungs and Lux swallows, brushing tears from her face. 

She doesn't have time to mourn, grieve, or feel guilty. She’s the leader; in times like this, she needs to keep everyone else together. 

"Nothing here!" She calls, exiting the room. Jinx echoes her call seconds later, closing the door to the room she'd checked farther down the hall. Janna soon follows suit with the same call from her check of the other two bedrooms and shared bathroom. Lulu is standing frozen in the doorway to the final bedroom, and when Lux goes over to check on her she sees why. 

The room must have been painted pastel at one point, because it's a faded color that is impossible to tell whether it had been yellow or green. The room itself has obviously been taken by nature a bit; mold is on the walls and there's a hole in the roof still dripping from the rain a few nights ago, leaving the carpet soggy. The gutter looks like it must be broken, because all the water is running freely down the far wall to pool on the carpet, growing a thick pad of moss. 

There's a small single bed, the frame rotting and half-collapsed, and the mattress obviously long gone to bugs, mold and moths. A couple of stuffed animals pool off of it, little button eyes staring emptily. Soft blankets that would have been fluffy once, before nature opened the wall up and left the room exposed to the elements for several years. 

The room looks fairly normal. A dresser, shelves all falling out. A bookshelf, the books turned to bright-coloured mush from water damage. _Neekos room?_

“They were surprised." Lulu says suddenly. 

Lux swallows. _I know, _she wants to say, remembering the room with the queen bed. Instead, she turns Lulu around with a few pats on the back and leads her out of the room. There's no door to close, and the memory of the lonely ring haunts her all the way down the hallway stairs. 

_Did they know?_ Lux wonders. _ Did they plan it, or did it happen when they bonded? Is this why Sarah didn't want to go upstairs? Did she come here with Ahri after they died? _

"Upstairs is clear." Lux announces. Sarah is staring at the kitchen counter, hands pressed into the edges. She looks tired, eyebrows furrowed in an emotion Lux can't identify. _Grief? Worry_? 

"Great," Sarah says sarcastically, drops her hands to the counter with an audible _smack_. "The garden in the backyard matches the picture Lulu drew. This is the only place close-by I can think of that Neeko would come to." She rubs her face with her hand. "Let's find the others and hope they found something." 

There’s the sound of a portal opening and quickly closing, a brief vacuum pushing against the laws of space and time. 

"We did!" A cheery voice calls out. Sarah blindly whips out a pistol towards the voice, and Ezreal backs up, hands in the air. The star on his gauntlet is faintly glowing. "Woah, woah! Okay, I get it, no surprising!" He yelps, backing off. Syndra snickers, walks from behind Ezreal to take a seat next to Sarah. 

"Ezreal! Stop playing around, I could have shot you -" Sarah cuts off, staring past the cheekily grinning boy. 

There's another person behind Ezreal. Her hair Lux notices first; a loud aumbry mix of pink to orange to green. Somehow it works. Second thing she notices is the long peach tail that curls up behind her. _Another alien guardian_. Stars are all over her body in yellow highlighted with lime-green, and she’s wearing a white blouse with an orange skirt. White fingerless gloves reach up to her elbows, but her bare hands and feet are green, and rather than boots she has leg wrappings similar to what Lux has seen Xayah and Rakan wear. The stranger is probably taller than Lux when she stands straight, but she doesn't seem inclined to do that at the moment, half hunched, hugging her arms and staring at Sarah. 

__

_The missing guardian._

"Neeko!" Sarah’s voice is trembling. Ezreal shimmies out of the way just in time for Neeko to leap forward and latch into her in a hug. The big star resting on her head like a crown glows like the light on a giant fire-fly. 

“I can’t believe it - “ 

Sarah sounds dazed, stunned with disbelief. Neeko has climbed up Sarah like a tree; her legs clamped around Sarah’s waist, hiding her face in the other’s shoulder. Sarah, still looking floored, somehow holds the other girl up without losing balance. 

After a few more seconds Neeko disentangles herself and drops down, wiping at her eyes as they separate. 

“Neeko is so glad to see you - “ She sniffles, but she’s smiling, loose and sappy with relief. A huge weight has been taken off her shoulders. She speaks with an interesting lilt, like the words are still awkward and unfamiliar to her. 

“I have… a lot of questions.” Sarah admits with a watery smile. “I thought, _we_ both thought that you were _gone_.” 

Neeko giggles briefly and uses her forearms to rub over her eyes. 

“Neeko is good at hiding! But going home was too dangerous, so I stayed away.” Her crown dims and droops. “It happened anyway. Neeko is sorry.” 

Sarah takes her by the shoulders. 

“Don’t apologise. I’m the one who should be sorry; we should have found you long ago, saved you years ago. We’re a team, and we took so _long_. I’m so sorry -” 

“Nu-uh. Don’t be sad. Ahri came, just in time! She fought Zoe, saved me!” The big star on her crown blinks in yellow and with a flash of sparkles Neeko is gone. Standing in her place is Ahri, identical down to the last strand of perfectly styled hair. 

Luxanna gapes. Looks at the rest of her teammates. Soraka looks calm as always, not even reacting to the shapeshifting. Janna similarly doesn’t spare a second glance and has already moved over to speak quietly with Soraka. Syndra is leaning backwards awkwardly to unsubtly listen to their conversation. 

“Wait!! You have shapeshifting magic?! Can you become anyone??” Jinx loudly interrupts. The Neeko-as-Ahri winks, then after another shower of sparkles there’s two Jinxs standing in the kitchen. 

“Oh. Em. Gee. This is the best.” Jinx is bouncing on the heels of her feet; the fuse of her interest had been lit. From the looks of it, Lux can tell she’s planning some kind of prank. “Oooh, how about Luxy here? Can you become her?” 

Jinx grabs Lux by the elbow, pulls her over closer a few steps. The secondary Jinx shrugs, and in less than a half second she’s wearing a new, rounder face. Lux gasps; _it’s like looking in a mirror_. _ How does she do it? The powers of the first-star sure are diverse. _ The Neeko-her blows a kiss at Jinx, who recoils back like she’s been shot, then pointedly looks out the kitchen nook’s window, ears red. 

Sarah clears her throat then, waves Jinx and Lux to back away from the yellow gem. 

“You have new friends!” Neeko is still sniffling, but her smile is genuine. “Who are our new friends? Ahri found them too?” 

“I’m Ezreal.” The blonde winks at Neeko. She claps happily. 

“You are pretty for a boy! Almost… too pretty.” 

“Er, thanks.” He doesn’t seem to mind._Probably used to hearing it,_ Lux thinks. _Neeko isn’t wrong, he is pretty for a boy_. 

“Syndra.” The purple-gem says coolly, pushing the conversation along. Neeko-Lux blinks, and then suddenly she too has an eyepatch that matches._It doesn’t look good on me_. Lux notes. _I’ll have to make sure to never need one_. 

“My name is Soraka.” The healer bows. 

Neeko turns to Lux then, still wearing her skin. Lux smiles back, mirroring her doppleganger’s expression. 

“My name is Luxanna.” Lux points to everyone in turn, and they wave as they’re named. “My team is Janna, Lulu, and - “ 

“- me!! Jinx!” Jinx whips out her hand, posing for a handshake. 

Neeko giggles and takes her hand, they shake vigorously. “You have no blue star?” She asks, cocking her head at Lux. 

“We do, her name is Poppy. She’s at our house right now, with - “ 

_With Xayah_ , she almost says, but bites her tongue. “- With a friend.” She says instead. Ezreal shoots her a look she can't identify. 

“Neeko is glad to meet you all. _Co-’om se-henna_.” She briefly traces her fingers over each of their arms in turn. Where she traces over her arm Lux would swear she could feel a tingling over her skin that resonates in her gem. 

This seems to satisfy Neeko. She stretches some iridescent matter between her fingers until it snaps and disappears. 

“Neeko, are you hurt? Did you fight Zoe?” Sarah nods towards Soraka, and the green gem walks carefully towards Neeko, hands carrying an airy glimmer. 

Another full-body gleam, and Neeko is back in her regular, multicoloured skin. Lulu claps while jumping up and down, giggling joyfully like it’s a magic trick. Soraka raises her staff and starts to tend to her wounds. Bruises and cuts reverts to smooth, slightly green-tinted skin. 

Her crown stays drooping. 

“Neeko fought them before coming here. Ahri told me to leave. I left, I ran. Neeko should have stayed.” She clamps her hands together, fingers lacing together to hold firm. Sarah puts her hands over the chameleon's. 

“You’re safe with us now. That’s all that matters.” 

Neeko’s hair bobs as she shakes her head back and forth. 

“We’re not safe. Ahri… Ahri will not win. Zoe is strong. We need to leave, go anywhere but here.” She pulls on Sarah’s hands, looking towards the screen door. Sarah stays standing steady. 

“We know she’s coming here. We’re going to fight.” Lux says, and Ez and Jinx nod in agreement. Syndra and Janna briefly lock eyes, but avert them just as quickly. Neeko only trembles, her hands going up to hug at her own shoulders. 

“N-no, we must leave! Please!” She reaches and tugs further on Sarah’s wrist, straining towards the door. Sarah finally pulls herself free. 

“You don’t have to fight. I’m sure you’re tired, drained from fighting. You can hide here, if you want. We’ll be okay, I _promise_.” 

“_Please_ \- “ Neeko is shaking like a leaf, skin turning pallid. It looks off with her natural green and blue hues, just making her look washed out and thin. 

“We need to fight her if we want to find Ahri.” Lux says then, and the mood turns more somber. Neeko’s green hands ball up into tiny fists, but she nods, tight lipped. 

“Neeko understands. I will stay here.” 

Sarah doesn’t seem surprised at this declaration. Neither does Syndra. But the others look a little disappointed. Still, nobody says anything to try to convince her. 

_ I can’t blame her for not wanting to fight again so soon. Not after whatever happened. If there’s a story to be heard, there’s no time for it tonight. _

“She’s outside.” Lulu abruptly says in the brief silence, and Lux feels her back tighten, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Neeko steps backwards until her back hits the kitchen wall, her flesh changing colour to match the yellow wall-paper. 

_No, not Zoe. This soon? We aren’t ready!_

Lux rushes to the front door, takes a flashlight in one hand and Lulu’s hand in the other as she exits the house and stands on the porch, scanning the area. 

“There!” Lulu points. 

Xayah is standing out in the lawn, staring up at the house. 

Her expression is blank, pupils slit thin. Her eyes narrow slowly, and Lux abruptly notes that she has feathers conjured in her hand, sharp, shining - and darkened. A blue comet is heading towards them, then lands on the overgrown lawn with a blinding flash. 

Poppy is fully in her star guardian gear, hammer out and blue pig-tails standing on end. She’s fuming, near red in the face. 

“Poppy! Stand-down!” Lux yells, and Poppy turns her glare onto her. Her snaggle tooth is stubbornly protruding up against her top lip. 

“She tried to escape!!” The blue gem yells back. Lux desperately shakes her head. 

“Xayah isn't our prisoner!” 

_ Well, she kind-of is being forced to stay with us against her will. _ So maybe she kinda _is_ their prisoner, but Poppy was left behind to watch her, make sure she didn’t… do anything dangerous. Not to make her feel trapped. 

Xayah has turned her attention from the house, ears twitching, and Lux feels a chill go down her spine. 

"Lulu." Lux says. "Grab the others." 

The little green nods, runs inside. Lux carefully steps off the creaky porch, moves toward Xayah and Poppy. 

"Are you alright?" She asks carefully. 

Xayah barely glances at her, but she fans out the feathers in her hand slowly. She's looking straight up now, and her eyes glint strangely in the light of the night sky. 

"I can feel her." Xayah says after a moment. The others are coming from the house, with Lulu leading the dash. “We don’t have long.” 

"Is that why you followed us?” 

“...Of course.” Xayah says, voice strange. Her eyes are locked onto Sarah briefly, bright and predatory pink that glint red, before she turns her head away to look up at the sky again. 

Sarah appears disbelieving, tense and wary. Neeko is staring at Xayah as though she’s looking at a ghost. She turns transparent and disappears. A second later the front door opens and shuts. Jinx hoists her gun up onto her shoulder and follows Xayah’s gaze, then tugs Lux’s arm. Lux glances over at her, then looks where her childhood friend is pointing. 

The sky doesn’t look right, misted and twisted ever so slightly, like dark storm clouds have been ripped through by great invisible claws to blot out the stars and the moon. She tenses. The light isn’t right, as if things they can’t see are cascading it the wrong direction. Xayah’s standing unnervingly still, eyes casting wildly over the night-sky as though she’s looking for something. 

Sarah starts doing it too. 

“D-did this happen last time?” Lux asks. 

Sarah frowns, lips twisting. “Close enough. The atmosphere was different there, the sky looked different, but the light not behaving right? Yeah. Zoe’s coming. We can only hope Ahri’s with her, one way or another.” 

_Ahri. _ Lux had nearly forgotten. 

“Get ready.” Xayah says abruptly. Ezreal moves closer to Lux, as though instinctively. His eyes are cast upwards, his gauntlet humming with power as he calls on his familiar. Poppy slings her hammer up, grasping it with both hands. After a second, Lulu steps closer, too, hopping up onto a little rock and putting her hands over her eyes as she looks up. 

“Janna, Lux. Whatever happens, protect Soraka.” Syndra says, and Lux looks over to Janna, who nods. The two purple gems didn’t often get along, but they were both experienced, and old. In the face of Zoe, they could be civil. Syndra’s face is solemn even though her posture was eager. _Syndra is always eager to fight, but this is different._

__

Lux looks to their best healer. Soraka is stiff and tense, her fingers white around her staff. She looks haunted and distracted, staring up at the sky. Lulu, too, is looking in the same spot. Xayah is following something with her eyes that the rest of them can’t see, and they are following her cue. 

Ezreal puts his hand on the star of his gauntlet, starts his transformation sequence. Janna and Syndra soon follow, twirling and casting their familiars out of their chest. 

_Green. What had they said about green? _ Lux struggles, casting for the memory blindly as she steps and spins, calling the starlight to grant her power. She sees a flash of red - Jinx and Sarah must finally be transforming, too. 

_Green gems are the closest to the First Star._

Lux drops back to the ground, pink kitten heels land on the soft dirt. She looks at Xayah’s green gem, a brilliant mint. The bright green of her eyes, mottled with pinks like marble, her hands that have blackened and the strange shimmer of her feathers. Soraka’s brilliant green, bright and vivid, so much so it almost glows. Lulu’s green hair and bright eyes, strangely focused. 

_They can see what we can’t. They can see her coming._ _ What does a cosmic entity of nihilism and madness look like to the eyes that can see the Light? _

Suddenly, Xayah moves. 

It’s so fast Lux almost misses it. Xayah’s _fast,_ grabs Lulu and Ezreal and pushes them out of the way. A comet of blackness strikes the ground near where they’d been standing, sending dirt flying into the air. Lux tenses, twirling her staff into position. 

“Move, fall back.” Xayah says, voice rough as she pulls Ezreal up to a standing position where he’d stumbled and fallen from the minor shockwave. “Away from the cliffs, the house is too close. Get to the street!” 

It speaks volumes that nobody questions her. More missiles - not comets, Lux had realized when she got a good look at them, but strange twisted star-shaped things - pattered into the ground behind them as they moved. Ezreal scooped up Lulu as he sprinted, setting her near Janna who had formed a shield around a section of the street, then teleporting over to a flank with a _vop._

__

_ Ezreal is very mobile, he’ll be fine._

Lux readies herself with them, but Syndra and Sarah both position themselves further away, both of them confident in their own ability. Neeko stays close to Sarah, and Soraka groups with Lux and the other healers as Poppy positions herself between them and where the missiles were coming from, ready to send them right back. 

Xayah stands further away from the rest of them. She seems so unbothered, unperturbed. Lux can’t help but compare Xayah’s steadfast presence to Ahri’s; she feels almost like a _leader, _seamlessly taking charge. All chill, unflustered even as the world was falling down around them. 

Dust and dirt fly into the air a few metres away; Lux stabs her staff into the ground, bracing against it. 

_Not the time for a girl crush, Lux! I can ask later -_

“Luxy!” 

She turned. Jinx was moving backwards towards her, staring at something distinctly over her shoulder. “Look!” 

Bubbles are flying, there are strange storm clouds boiling up, too thick to just be clouds. She squints. Droplets of rain are falling from the sky, but the liquid isn’t clear like water. It’s tinted black, like ink is dripping from the cloud. The land stains black where it falls, and it extends for miles. 

“We can’t do anything for it.” Lux says. “Focus on here.” 

Jinx nods, but her lips twist. Shiro transforms into her minigun and Jinx braces to hold it straight. 

“Ready!” Syndra calls suddenly. “She’s dropping! Janna, brace!” 

Shields go up, one on top of the other in layers of prismatic magic. The sky is flashing, like a train passing by a window at night. Vivid bright between the clouds, and then debris starts to fall amongst the rain. Columns, chunks of buildings, steeples and gazebos falling towards them. 

Heart racing, Luxanna looks to either side of the street. Lines of houses with their lights off, innocent people unaware of the strife outside. Their shields were barely enough for the nine of them._We can’t protect them_, she realises with horror. _Zoe was going to make the street a blood-bath_. 

She starts to run outside of their sphere of shields. She gets one foot out before a hand grabs her hard around the wrist. Lux looks over her shoulder, arm straining. Janna is staring past her. 

“No, what about -!!! “ 

“_Lux_. Watch.” 

_What did she mean?? _ They were about to get buried in rubble! 

Lux braces for impact. 

When the debris hits the ground it fizzles away, white marble and stone that vanishes the second it touches the earth. 

“What?” 

“She always liked to make a dramatic entrance. Either it’s so quiet you don’t know until she’s there, or she drops in like _this, _all apocalyptic.” Xayah says, rolling her eyes. Lux stares up at the sky, at the beacon falling, bright and vivid. A comet of a Guardian’s light, a mockery that’s a thousand stolen colors and shadow-deep purples, cast in a sickly orange aura. 

_A warning? Or a taunt?_

__

_She wants us to know she’s coming._

__

Portals open in the sky, like weeping blisters in the fabric of reality. Black shapes drop from them, falling amidst the last of the illusionary rubble, twisted and strange. 

When she truly _looks, _they almost appear human. Some of them aren’t in the least, but she recognizes them. Twisted things of the Void, not quite Void anymore. 

The impact of the shadows landing shakes the ground in a way that a normal Guardian would never manage, a shockwave of sound that makes her knees shake. They coalesce slow, forms in a constant state of melding and blurring, melting between human and _something else_. 

Then they hear it. It’s loud and rumbling like a giant jungle cat, and Lux stares with unblinking eyes as part of the crag Ahri’s old house is perched upon near crumbles down the bank to the deep ditch below, sending dust flying up. 

Another portal rips open in the epicentre of the display, and a dark spark descends. 

It’s a child. 

Lux doesn’t know what she expected. Someone almost like Syndra maybe; older than her and more experienced, but also tainted with the same darkness that had marked Xayah’s skin like ink spilt over an empty canvas. 

Instead, Zoe is smaller than her, more to the size of Lulu or Poppy. She’s small, appearing as a twelve-year-old human child, but her eyes are wild and mismatched, her hair floating opposite of the sharp, cold wind around them. Her outfit is a mockery of star guardian garb, frills and ruffles like a circus performer’s but soaked in the colours of a black hole. 

There’s something off about her. Her smile is too wide, her eyes too big, her fingertips sharp. Her hair is covered in gems, and Lux feels her stomach rise as she sees them. _Wearing corpses as jewelry. _Lux glances over towards Sarah, remembering Rakan’s dim and cracked gem. 

The shadows are standing now. They take a staggering step, then _wait_. 

“Ohh! Is this a welcoming party?” The child chirps. Her voice grates wrong, it reverbs between realms, and Lux feels her Light twitch in a way that’s disarming and not of her own volition. “I _love_ surprise parties! They’re always so _fun._” 

“Quit the small talk, Zoe.” 

Xayah’s voice is hard, edged but not nervous. She stands unflinching, and some part of Lux can’t help but admire that. Zoe regards her, floating as she puts her cheek on her hand, scrunching it up like a pouting child. 

“Awwh, Xayah, you’re no fun! Not _nearly _as fun as Rakan was _. _Oh, by the way, where _is_ he?” 

Xayah twitches, ears folding back. Zoe practically leaps on the weakness, her smile sharp toothed and vicious. 

“_That’s riiiight. _He’s _dead again, _huh? Surprised that I know? I felt it, in the pieces I’ve taken.” She runs a hand through her lengthy hair, the gems glinting along her tresses. “How long should I wait to bring him back this time? Think he’d enjoy a year away from you? Last time it was only a month, but if I remember right he wasn’t the same after...” Her grin grows, unnaturally far this time. She has too many teeth and her eyes are sparkling, her fingers twitching. 

“I think you’re missing something.” Xayah says, forces through her gritted teeth as she straightens up, ghosts of her wings flaring behind her, half folded and shining. 

Zoe pauses, blinks dramatically, then leans in to examine Xayah. 

“Ohh. You’re all green again!” She twitches her fingers like she’s pulling on something, watches Xayah with a sharp pointed focus, then pouts as whatever was supposed to happen obviously doesn’t. 

“And you can ignore my orders! Noo! I was wondering what happened. Stupid bird boy.” She snarls, and reality _twists_. The colours of the world invert, like a negative photo filter applied over their vision. The neighbourhood around them starts to crack and separate, trees uprooting and cars lifting to float slightly in the air. Ezreal barely flinches; he ripped portals regularly. But most of the others looked ill if they glimpsed the cracks; Lux felt pain stab into her eyes when she looked at them. 

“I guess it’s good that I went and got more then!” Zoe exclaims suddenly, sitting back and folding her leg over her knee like she’s reclining in an invisible chair. Portals start forming behind her, dark holes of gathering power. 

“Do you know how _hard_ it is to get _new puppets_? If you don’t get them at _just the right time_, they lose sapience.” Zoe complains, spinning a ball of dark matter on a string. “You were so _useful,_ and now I had to go get _subpar _minions instead!” Zoe starts giggling, “But it does mean that I get to bring back some old _favorites.”_

She hurls the dark matter, spinning it and chucking it from the string like it’s a shepherd’s sling. 

The shields over them shatter. 

The guardians scatter into different directions. Ezreal disappears in a blink of blue, Luxanna finds herself jumping to the left alongside Janna and Jinx. Xayah has her ears pricked up, feathers splayed out. She’s the only one who stayed in place, not phased by the child’s appearance. 

Poppy is spinning her hammer in her hands, posture somewhat unsure. Sarah is first to run forward, eyes narrowed in hate, guns raised, but whatever she’s about to say is interrupted when Zoe snaps her fingers. 

Portals pop open around her, and more shapes lumber out. These are more humanoid, glowing sparks of light over their faces and occasionally their chests, but the rest of their form is cloaked in a flowing, shifting darkness. 

One silhouette is familiar; a slender shape with nine long tails and short ears steps forwards, slapping her hand out and sending a sphere of dark pink magic straight for them. 

Lux raises a hand to her throat. She steps back, bumps into Jinx’s arm. 

_It can’t be._

"Ahri?" Sarah gasps. 

Syndra grabs Sarah by the shoulder and pushes her into the ground before the magic orb can hit her. It returns to the nine-tailed shade, and hovers in her hand with a slight glow. 

"If you can't think in the fight, step down." Syndra snaps, unleashing an array of Multi’s orbs flying towards the shade with a sharp point of her arm. They pass through the shade of Ahri, causing her form to shiver and ripple like water, sending black and red splashing along the ground. Her shadow stumbles back. Soraka casts equinox under the fox’s feet, and it makes a clear ping like a struck pipe as it triggers, rooting Ahri’s shade in place. Sarah looks aghast, but gets back on her feet quickly and holds up her guns with no further hesitation. 

She doesn’t have the luxury to keep idly spectating. 

A male shape Lux doesn't recognize leaps at them, the red star on his face pulsing as he swipes at her with a long, thin blade. She ducks under his jabs while Jinx tosses one of her clamp traps. It springs with a loud _clap _around his leg while Lux follows up with a binding light. Just a few shots of Jinx’s mini-gun and it turns to ash, flakes into nothing. 

Lux hears Poppy yell a war-cry, then the tell-tale clang of the metal striking a body. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a yellow-starred shade sail into the air and smash against a telephone pole. 

_Where’s Zoe?_

She looks about wildly; the dark god is portaling about, pulling gems from her hair and summoning new phantoms with just a point of her fingers whenever one falls. Sarah shoots a glowing bullet up at her, but she dips through a rift opened in the ground and reappears a quarter of a second later from the roof of a red van, floating in the air, waving cheekily at her. 

The cracks lining the area strobe with a green-purple glow, sickly as poison. A wave of nausea hits her, and she forces herself to look away from the direct sections of corruption. 

Ezreal blinks through-out the street, flinging discs of his magic at the lesser void creatures spilling from the portals Zoe had summoned, bug-like creatures with tentacles and spikes and an abundance of eyes. Janna helps with her wind magic, sending out tornadoes to keep the creatures at bay while he picks them off. Occasionally Ezreal gains a sparkly glint of temporary shield magic - Lulu’s handiwork based on the green-grey shimmer. 

_Are they really okay with just the three of them_ ? Lux gathers light into the palm of her hand, tosses it out towards a trio of shadowy void creatures getting too close for comfort. It explodes after a few moments, sending the things skittering and squeaking as their carapaces hardened and curled. Ezreal sends her a thumbs up, then yelps as a much bigger monster grabs one of his legs with a spike-lined tentacle. 

“Ez!” Lux cries, throws her baton-staff towards him. The blue-gem glows with her prismatic shield as he aims his gauntlet at the core of the dendrite-shaped insect, glowing blue bright as a dwarf-star. He fires; the creature lets out a screech but lets go, spewing dark green blood from it’s amputated stump. 

“I’m okay!” He yells. 

A tornado tears through a line of the void creatures; their carapaces immediately harden and stiffen as they die. Lux shakes herself out of it, runs from the road to grab her baton off the neighbouring front yard of a different house. 

Syndra has several of her familiars hovering around her at the ready. She’s surveying the scene with a set jaw, sending off a blast of magic to push back any creature that gets too close to herself or to Soraka. Her eyepatch glows a royal purple. 

The eye of hers that Lux _can_ see is trained on Zoe as she bops around, portaling about the area like it was a game of tag. Ahri is still rooted, thrashing and reaching with her taloned fingers in the center of equinox’s circle - Soraka is holding out her staff and channeling, managing to keep it intact for now. 

_How long can she manage to hold it_ ? 

Lulu runs towards her, staff waving in the air. An influx of energy washing over her, Lux feels like she’s chugged three coffees, or ate an entire box of chocolate. 

An arrow pings against her shield. Lux spins around, pink pigtails flying. A purple shade is readying his bow for another shot. 

“Look out!” 

Poppy charges forward, crushes the purple shade with a single swing. It explodes into more of the strange space ash. 

Ezreal darts around a street light. Janna is still sending out tornadoes, sending several resurrected void creatures flying back with a gust of air, while Syndra unleashes a maelstrom of her familiars onto a yellow axe wielding husk. 

Jinx is running around wildly, shooting rockets at whatever looks her way with giggles and whoops. Lux sees her hit a green gem with a hammer not unlike Poppy’s. The thing turns into the black slag like the others with little fanfare, but one point from Zoe and the pieces are shuddering; pulling back together until the star on its face is glowing green once again, the cracks where it had been injured glowing along with it like some reanimated golem. Jinx responds by shooting it with another rocket; but this time it doesn’t break apart with one shot, barely even shuttering on impact. 

She can hear Zoe laughing. 

The child seems to be nowhere, yet everywhere at once. Lux doesn’t have to look closely to know that her team is getting more wounded the longer the fight goes on, more tired. 

_ We can’t keep this up forever, even with Soraka and Janna helping with their healing magic _ . Lux realises, stomach sinking like a stone. She casts her gaze behind her. 

“Syndra!” She yells, throwing out a few exploding lucent crests of magic. “Where’s Zoe?!” 

“Towards the house!” Syndra shoots one of her familiar’s orbs as a guide towards the abandoned safehouse. Lux watches it streak across the dusty-tan sky, standing out against the darker flecks that hovered far above, the far horizon stained with navy blue. 

_ Towards the house? Why would she go there when all of us are here? _ Lux wonders. She does a quick headcount of who she can see fighting on the street. All of her own team were present, Soraka, Syndra, Sarah and Ezreal were still dipping about, fending off the hollow-eyed minions that flicker like dying lightbulbs. Xayah is on the neighbour’s front lawn,retrieving feathers back to her hand as fast as she can throw them, slicing through rows of the monsters at a time. Her casting stops briefly as her head follows the glowing line of Syndra’s familiar, looking a minute towards the old home. 

__

_ Neeko!_

Lux starts her sprint up the hill of the driveway, gathering a paralysing coil of light magic between her fingers. 

She disintegrates a foursome of the lesser-void creatures with a blast from her staff, breathing heavy as she fights her way up towards the old safe house. _No time to fight right now_. She jumps over the lashing tail of a larger cross between a scorpion and a crab and keeps on running. 

Then something slams into her right flank like a thick tree branch, knocks her off her feet. She shrieks in alarm, finds herself cast up into the air, then slammed back onto the grass. For a second she’s dizzy, winded and half stunned on the ground. 

_Don’t just lie there girl, move_ ! 

Instinct gets her to roll to the right. A tail stinger is half a foot deep into the dirt where she had been lying a second previous. It pulls free in a single swift movement, dirt and blades of grass sticking to its slimy flesh. The crab creature is scuttling towards her, not content to be ignored. It smells like rotting fish, eye stalks turning to look straight at her. 

Lux scrabbles backwards on the grass, hand groping for her staff. The segmented tail rises up, dull grey spikes popping out of where there had previously been discolouration. It tenses, readying another attack. She grabs her staff. Tosses a root; the monster shudders as it takes hold, but it only lasts a second. 

She jumps to her feet, launches a flare of concentrated light magic at the monster. Detonates the flare by closing her hand into a fist. 

The monster bursts with a wet _squelch_. Lux flinches back in disgust as green blood splashes over her, globs landing on her arms and blouse. She wipes it off her skin in alarm onto the grass. _Hopefully it’s not corrosive_. It’s odd, but all she can think of is; _Janna will kill me if she has to do the laundry again tomorrow_ . _Monster blood is harder than spaghetti sauce to get out of fabric_. 

“Okay, okay - “ She says aloud. Her heart is still running a marathon in her chest, and she leans a little over while trying to catch her breath. “You can do this Lux. You just need to find Zoe.” 

She sprints up the rest of the driveway, slams her shoulder against the front door of the house to break it open. A splintering crack, and she’s through. 

It’s too quiet inside the house. _Like there’s no fight happening outside at all._

The pink gem looks behind her just to be sure; portals are still scattered among the sky, leaking the void monsters in a steady stream, her family still fighting them and whatever star-marked shadows currently on their feet. 

Alone, the house feels even more like a mausoleum. 

Her legs tremble. 

_I should have brought back-up_ . 

She pushes her feet forward anyway. _No time for regrets now_. _I have to do this_. 

The wood floors groan under her feet, even though she tries to step lightly. _Where would Neeko go to hide? Upstairs, probably,_ she realises with distaste. The house is bare bones now, not much left to hide behind. 

Cupping her hands together gives her an orb of swirling light. Shadows still linger among the baseboards, the crown-molding and corners of each room. The wall-paper warps and swirls when she looks too long at it, the flower vines twist and droop like melting crayons. 

On her way inside the living room her foot stubs against the floor and she stumbles. The floor is becoming unlevelled, it rises and falls like a boat on the ocean. _Zoe’s influence_? Twisting the inside as she had changed their pocket of reality on the outside. 

Her stomach rolls. _Is it possible to get sea-sick on land_? 

There’s shuffling, like claws on hardwood, sounding like a dog’s feet as it runs through the house. 

_From the kitchen? No, from upstairs_ ? 

Lux backs up, dives behind the covered couch. She cups her hands at the ready, preparing a charge. She tries to control her breathing, _in and out slow. Count to six each way _\- 

A crash, the sound of furniture toppling over. A whine, guttural and inhuman. _Another shade. Zoe must be looking for Neeko too_! 

It’s close. Right in the hall outside. Lux squeezes her eyes shut just a second, body tense as a piano string, too close to snapping to be comfortable. The scraping gets close, echoes last near the narrow doorway, then stops. 

_Now_ ! 

She rolls from behind the couch, hands outstretched. 

_It has wings._

Her fingers tremble. 

_ Burning, scorched flesh. A hole she can see through to the soiled ground _ \- 

She retracts her hands in a flash and pulls them to her chest. 

The creature has no such reservations. It lunges at her, hits like a truck and takes her to the floor. Lux hears a crack as her head hits against the floor, and then she’s seeing double. She pushes up with her legs, punches up with her hands to try to hold the thing off her. Her ears are ringing. 

_He’s too heavy! How is he heavier than before??_ ? 

She cries out, but it’s a flimsy sound, the thing’s hand pressing hard down on her chest, stopping it from rising. White scraps of clothing are hanging off it’s neck and shoulders, green fabric barely managing to hold on around the ankles. She glimpses to her right - her staff is lying there, just out of reach. She attempts to cast without it; her fingertips tingle, but she barely gets a spark. 

_I’m too panicked. Breathe Lux, concentrate_ !! 

It’s a shade, not some void-dog like she originally thought. A blue star hovers on its face, obscuring what humanising features already made difficult to recognise from the blanket of corruption. The shape of it is distinctly masculine, tall atop long legs, clawed hands and feet. All of which are obfuscated by shadow, rendering the form looking blurry and indistinct, as if assembled by dark fog converged into form. 

Its cape is partially split and held out half unfurled; dripping black sludge from his back, flowing down his feathers to drip onto the floor. _What is that, oil_? _Blood_? 

_It can’t be_ . 

He’s hunched as he settles atop her, drops his face down towards the crown of her head. Lux goes absolutely still, holds her breath. It takes a deep sniff in; she can feel his breath in her hair, snuffling like some big cat. 

Then he pulls his face back away, makes a displeased grunt in his throat. He sniffs audibly at the air a second, chasing it with a sorrowful _whine_. 

_It’s looking for something, but whatever it is it’s not me_ . 

For a moment, it looks like he’s going to release her. 

Lux sighs in relief - and the shade refocuses it’s attention _downwards_. It takes her a second to realise what it would be. 

_My soul-gem_ . 

Drool drips from under the shade’s facial star, lands on her gem’s golden case with a light _plik_. Lux snaps back to reality. 

“No!! Get off me!!” 

It’s too heavy. She knees upwards with no reaction, and tries to hold his chest up, keeping his face away from her sternum. Her muscles start to shake, leaving her arms quivering as jello. She can’t hold him off forever. His breath is sour yet cold against her face. She tries to cast again, her stunning light is barely formed, it barely freezes him for a second. 

_Poppy was right. We all should have gone to the gym more._

Clawed fingers dig into her forearms, pushes them away from his chest and pins them to the floor with ease. Then he leans down slow, sniffing towards the gem. Lux sobs; tries twisting left and right, arching her spine to bridge up. The knees on either side of her prevented any real potential to wiggle out, and her attempted bridge doesn’t even make it off the floor. 

A _clink_. Teeth against metal. It dangles in his mouth, hanging tauntingly from his lips by one spoke. A low rumbling comes from his throat, like a growl but infinitely more pleased. 

_He’s going to eat me_ . _What will happen with my gem gone_? _My sisters..._ _I’m sorry I failed you_. 

She squeezes her eyes shut. _Waits_. 

Then there’s a sound, a _scwoop_ of an opening portal, humming low with energy. It lights the room up briefly in purple, then fades. An object drops down onto her breast. Lux dares to peer from under her lashes. 

_My gem… he dropped it. Why_ ? 

She can’t see from out from around him. _A portal; Ezreal_?? 

Then the shade yowls in pain, jolts back as if shocked with electricity. It rolls off of her body and backs into a crouch, staring up and behind her body. 

A voice speaks; chiding and girlish. 

“Stop it - you _know_ we deal with the pink gems _last_.” 

_Zoe_ . 

Lux feels like ice has been dumped down her shirt. She freezes up, fingers clamping hard around her dented gem-case, fastens it back to the ‘V’ of her top. Her eyes lock onto her baton-staff, then flick over to Rakan. 

Though the shade still lingers in the room, staying a few feet radius from her, it has redirected back into pacing scratches into the hardwood, smearing lines of black where he walks. 

She snatches her staff back from the floor, hugs it to her front - neither Zoe nor the shade react. _Next… next what? Take on a shade and Zoe all alone_?? 

Maybe it would have been best if Rakan had eaten her gem after all. 

“Ah, he was always a bit _useless_. In this case, it saved your life. You should thank me!” The young voice says, sing-songy and faux-sweet. It _grates_ at her ears like nails on a chalkboard. 

Lux calmly gets to her feet, then turns around _slow_, as if quick movements would cause either corrupted creature to strike like some kind of apex predator. 

“Thank you.” She manages. Zoe only hums. 

The god-child is floating, sitting with her legs criss-crossed like she’s on some invisible chair. Her chin is resting on one of her propped hands, her expression bored. She bobs lightly up and down in the air. 

The child tips her head slightly to the side. 

“Oh, I thought you were someone else. You all look alike to me. Your gems, on the other hand…” 

Her eyes flash with an orange spark, she unfurls her legs and floats to the side. Her Rapunzel hair floats out to surround her. Lux feels like a fish in a net, just waiting to be pulled up. She taps a small finger against the star hanging at the front of her chest, giggling as she pulls away. 

“_I remember each and every one of them_.” 

Lux doesn’t move. She barely breathes, wouldn’t dare avert her eyes even for a second. 

“Why are you here?” She struggles to keep her voice calm, unwavering. “Why are you doing this?” 

Zoe puffs out her cheeks, rests her fist back against one side. The gems in her hair glint at irregular intervals like a line of Christmas lights. 

“Hmmmm~” Then she slaps her cheeks, making a popping sound. “For fun, mostly!” She floats in place like an astronaut in space, drifting lazily in the air until she’s hanging upside down. Her hair similarly is unaffected by gravity, curling and drifting where it pleases. The room’s air is still as a tomb; but her hair moves as if there’s a stiff breeze at all times. 

_Dramatic. Her and Jinx would get along_ . 

“Also… you have something that belongs to _me_,” Her right pupil starts to glow. A four pointed orange star, all lined in pink. “ - and I don’t _share_ my toys.” 

“You’ll never find Neeko - and she doesn’t belong to you!.” Lux tosses back her head. _What would Ahri do, what would Xayah say_? She doesn’t blink, stares the corrupted star guardian down. _ They’d be brave. Somewhere in there, she’s just a tween child, right _ ? 

Had she really been like them, once? A star guardian who willingly cast herself into corruption? 

“Neeko?” Zoe’s eyes go wide. “She’s here? Hmm.” 

Lux opens her mouth slightly - then abruptly bites her tongue. Her back flashes hot, sweat running down the nape of her neck to soak into her uniform blouse. 

_Good going Lux. God I’m such a blabbermouth._

“It’s tempting, but… I waited four years for that lizard. I can wait longer. I can wait foreeeeeeever!” Zoe drums her fingers on her chin, walks on air, slowly circling Lux. She shivers where Zoe’s hair brushes against her arm, the gems that her skin touches seem unnaturally cold. _ Are they lonely too, here forever with her? Or has it been so long they have nothing left _ ? 

Finally, the immortal child returns to floating upright. “What I want...” 

She leans in, whispers the last few words in Lux’s ear. 

“..._is my matching set back_.” 

The shade lets out a high pitched wail. It’s not a human sound, it distorts and rattles, the keening of pure sorrow. Lux flinches. 

Zoe turns around with a snap. 

“Shut up!” She raises a slender hand up high, and the shade shrinks back, slinking back down on all fours. Zoe clucks her tongue, crosses her arms. “You’re _scaring_ my new friend!” 

She turns back to Lux; her teeth are pointed where they weren’t before, a grinning shark. 

“You see? There’s hardly anything left. Useless. If you get a soul bonded pair, you need _both_. Where’s the fun in one?” 

“Xayah’s cured now. She won’t join you again.” Lux’s mouth is dry as a bone. She fights the urge to swallow. _No weakness. Not in front of Zoe_. 

Zoe’s canted her head slightly. 

“I have my ways. In fact... “ She points to her ear, then towards the hall. She giggles and bounces back, hops with her arms held out. _Just a child at play_. One, two, three, on the fourth hop a portal opens up under her feet and after one final wave at the two of them she drops through. It closes behind her with a vibrating _zwip_. 

_She’s gone_ . _For now_. Lux blinks, leans over and hugs her arms. She shudders, lets the tremor run through her head to toe. She feels wrong, _slimy._ She clutches her gem with her hands and mentally thanks Janna for forcing them all to wear covers. 

Fast footsteps, coming up the hall. Human, this time, distinctly. The shade perks up, rising to his feet with an arched back, wings poised and dripping black. Lux casts a harmless wisp towards the ceiling, illuminating the room and sending a bit of the flash out into the hallway. 

Pink and green. Tall ears. A feathered cloak. There’s a spread of star-daggers between her fingers as she comes into view, arched and ready to throw. 

A quick breath Lux barely hears and the knives drop onto the floor, shattering into stardust. 

“_Rakan_?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, here's me and my friend idolbird's powerpoint with all the updated lore if people are interested! https: //docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wOsPnr7JBUufQcMteBl_5FwX4pBS0XnfrIqmA-mFRWE/edit#slide=id.p1 (Just erase the space) Idolbird loves validation, so go give her some love ; ) <3 <3
> 
> Thanks again!!! See you all soon!!!!


	6. "That Would Be Truly Wonderful"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OooF.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well everyone, this is it. It's been a long road. I can't believe this thing is done! It's long too. Whoops.   
Thank you all so much for coming along with us, especially those that were reading from the start and commenting every chapter!! Your dedication lights a fire in us. <3 <3 <3 We had a lot of fun writing this entire thing, so we hope you all enjoyed reading it! 
> 
> PS: For the final time, here is the powerpoint me and idol made. It has all the star guardian lore and is up to date. I reference it regularly while writing in the SG universe, haha. Please give her some love too!!   
https: //docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wOsPnr7JBUufQcMteBl_5FwX4pBS0XnfrIqmA-mFRWE/edit#slide=id.p1
> 
> ________________________________

The house is not as she remembers it. It’s barren of furniture for the most part, covered in white sleeves and old dust and mold. The house smells of long-gone blood, decaying wood, and must. Black liquid shimmers on the hardwood flooring, Xayah finds her eyes drawn to it as she steps; the floor shifting constantly under her feet like sand. 

The liquid is sticky, like blood, but viscous. She carefully wipes her claws off on the moldy carpet. _Where is Zoe? _Syndra had said she was near here; her ears swivel and twitch as she listens. There’s movement through the house - upstairs, shifting of feet on the wood flooring. Then, the living room. _People are talking_. 

She knows that voice. 

_Zoe._

Her blood boils, the skin of her hands burns, and she clenches her jaw as she moves towards the living room. She can see the pink of Lux’s outfit from here, and Zoe summoning a portal. _No._ She moves, but by the time she’s there Zoe has popped away, and she’s left with her feathers primed to throw into the shade standing over Lux, except she looks closer and - 

Everything _freezes. _Xayah drops her feather daggers. 

Rakan tilts his head at her, the star of his face dim and unfocused. His eyes gleam like the gold discs of a predator, reflecting light like a hungry wolf at night in the darkness of the house and the strobing lights of the wonky moon outside. She opens her mouth to say something, and finds herself incapable of words. Feathers are sticking out of his chest, and she can just barely see the pitch black liquid that seeps from where they've embedded themselves in his flesh. His ears are torn, his hands more claws than fingers. _ Did I throw those? Did Zoe do that to him? Or did I do that to him, and not even realize? _

"Rakan?" She finally manages. 

He walks towards her, slow and methodical and _limping. _

"Rakan!?" She asks again, a little louder this time. He doesn't respond, but his eyes are locked onto her face. Lux is a background feature; she’s unnoticeable to her, now. _Doesn’t matter_. 

The empty space where he used to be is pulled tight, and she can feel it splitting open more like pulling a wound open further. She's being gutted, clawed fingers digging in and rending insides further apart. His gem’s not here, his soul is not near her. She feels nothing from this husk. He’s empty, just as _she’s_ empty. Zoe went to revive a body with nothing left to sustain it, and this is what was left. This is what’s left of her love. 

The shade’s head tilts as it regards her. Inquisitively, like some large dog, or confused parrot. 

_That's not Rakan._

The _Zwop_ of a portalfrom behind her. The ping-pong _pop_ of a paddle, and pain erupts from Xayah’s right flank, sending her down onto her knees with a grunt. 

_ She should have expected it. This is classic Zoe; she’s been sloppy, stupid, stupid, stupid - ! _ Blood, red and queasily warm gushes over the hand she presses against her side. With a hiss of pain she struggles back up onto her feet. 

"Isn't he _beautiful?_" Zoe croons, voice right in her ear. Her fingers trace down her shoulder, cold as a comet. Her hair swirls with colours as rich as a nebula, and when Xayah twists to stab, all she hits is air. 

_Gone again_ . Zoe pops up again, further down the hall with a little twiddle of her fingers. 

"I tried very hard to put him back together after those pesky Star Guardians blew him up, but it looks like he couldn't handle it anymore. Such a _shame_, really. But expected. Did you know less comes back each time someone’s revived? Cool right? _I keep count_._"_

She twirls, dips through the floor and ends up standing on the ceiling. She holds out her hand. Pointer finger pointing up, the rest of her fingers closed into a fist. “You, one. Him?” She taps her chin, then tries counting on her fingers several times through. 

Lux is creeping forward, left hesitant by the shade blocking the doorway. Xayah shakes; whips a dagger towards Zoe. 

“Shut up!” 

It goes through her forehead with a ripple effect, embeds itself into the wall on the other side. Indifferent, Zoe continues; 

“Wow, forgetting already? He’s only been gone a _day_. You move on fast! Let me help you remember.” 

She snaps her fingers. 

Unprompted, visions flash behind Xayah’s eyes, of countless battles on endless planets. This isn’t from her own memories, the emotions of fear and yearning mixing together in some toxic cocktail that leaves her desperate. The sky is a patchwork of different atmospheres they’d traversed, their battles flicking through a hundred a second. They all ended the same. A sword through his bowels, his body a pincushion for arrows. The lancer. The fall. That collapsing building, the rapier swordswoman... A portal, then a dark, isolated place. 

_ He had been quiet, unspeaking after that. Quiet, so quiet, watching her and searching for something that she hadn’t been able to give him _ . Xayah’s soul chokes - _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ \- ! 

Zoe laughs, and the sound brings her back to reality. 

“You have some of him, right? If you give it to me, I can bring him back, good as new! Well. Not _new_, but better than he is now.” 

Despite herself, Xayah’s lips pull into a snarl of fangs. She can feel corruption seeping from her side, the new one Zoe has torn into her stomach. The liquid is not nearly as dark as the stuff dripping from Rakan, like he’s bleeding away what little is left of himself. 

“Never again.” She growls. Zoe shrugs, nonchalant. Her smile widens as she fades back into the wall, disappearing into the twisting, amorphous shadows. Still, her words linger a few seconds after she had disappeared. 

_“Enjoy your reunion_ ._”_

Rakan’s feathers spread behind him with a horrible ripping noise, splattering black over the ground. Xayah feels her heart convulse in grief, then takes a breath to harden herself. 

“Xayah…?” Lux asks, the pink gem is clutching her wand at the ready with both hands, standing a few feet behind the door blocked by Rakan’s shade. Xayah can’t blame her for hesitating to attack Rakan again. “Who are you talking to?” 

_She’s in my head_ . Xayah realises, and her body goes cold, feathers stick up on end. _ Always has been since she brought me back. She still has a piece of me, but Rakan’s light is filling that slot now. But if she has a bit of me, then _ … 

“Lux. Just leave.” Xayah summons more feathers to her hand, slow. Rakan tilts his head, curious like a big dog, might as well be that she was offering a game of fetch. “Find Neeko. I’ll handle this.” 

She sends out a flurry of feathers and he dodges forward into the hall, but he's slow. Lux runs out from behind him and disappears upstairs. _She doesn’t matter_. Only Rakan does, this husk of him before her, still staring at her with a glinting star and terribly golden eyes. 

"What was it you liked to say?" She whispers as Rakan plucks several feather-daggers from his chest. Blood spatters over the ground as he throws it down. "That's right. Show me some moves." Xayah lifts her chin. 

Rakan lets out a low noise, then dashes. He's so much slower than she's used to, leaving black blood wherever he steps. His cape isn’t responding as it should and his tail looks as though it's limp, throwing off his balance. Even still, he's an opponent she has trouble matching; Rakan had always been even with her, a step with hers and an anchor to lean on. Now, fighting him again after so long she realizes that Rakan has become weak. _Just like me_. The dark matter they’d been sustaining themselves with, revived with, has ran through them fast, burned away, then left them worse off than before. 

Every time she leans into the bond to pull on his strength she's met with nothing. Xayah stumbles back as he swipes at her, then stabs into his shoulder with a hand full of quills. The yelping noise he makes is _wrong, _and he wobbles back to shake himself like a dog before leaping for her again, teeth bared. She feints left and dodges right into the kitchen, and watches him roll into the wall. Xayah hops a counter and pulls the same trick again; he tries to dig his claws in to change directions and fails, slamming against the kitchen’s screen door. It makes an ominous creak, the wood shuddering, then she lunges at him. Her weight and momentum make the final thing the door needs, and they go tumbling through it. 

Outside is terribly bright yet dark, the twisted sky _strobing_. She stumbles up and away when he tries to trap her in his arms. The grass is slick with the night time dew, cold on her feet as they stand again. He’s leaning hard to the right, putting most of his weight there. She tosses out her feathers, scattering them about the backyard as she continues to backpedal, Rakan’s shade advancing on her steadily. 

_If he grabs me, that would be it._ He’s slower, less coordinated now, but she had no doubt that his arms would be strong enough to snap her spine if he tried. 

Xayah’s back hits the fence. It sags back from her weight alone with a loud groan. 

“Don’t get any closer! I don’t want to have to do this!!!” 

_Mieli_ , _please_. Her heart pounds like an engine in her chest, yet he lumbers closer, shuffling like a scarecrow, a toy with broken parts. No amount of grasping for their bond would reach him, reach _it_. There’s nothing, _she’s_ nothing, devoid and dry. No strings to pull, no soul link to draw comfort from. _Empty_. 

The hand clutching her wound drops a moment, sliding down to press below her belly-button. 

The shade takes another step, though slower now, and stops once he’s two metres away. Stalling for time, waiting to strike. It growls lightly from its throat. 

_It’s not Rakan_ , she reminds herself. _It’s not him_. 

Xayah recalls her feathers; draws them back to her hand like the pulling of a dozen glittering stars. They launch through her mate, cutting him open like scissors through paper. 

He staggers towards her and collapses onto his knees, his breathing whistling as he struggles to stand back up. Whines erupt from the shade, short and deep-toned, as it angles its head to look up at her. His eyes are blank and devoid of anything; like looking into a fogged mirror. Rakan isn’t there, no matter how hard she tries to connect with him. 

She should finish him. Just one or two more knives, and the shade would be destroyed, at least until Zoe summons him back. Xayah’s mouth is dry. All she can see is _him_, clothes black but feathers and eyes still bright, panting as he stands braced with his arms held out in front of her, the tip of a sword peeking out through a rib. 

_I can’t do it_ . 

More of that oily fluid splatters over the ground, dark matter mixed with blood mixed with something_ arcane_. It congeals as it drips, the creature clearly drawing upon something to close up the wounds, gum them shut with a temporary fix as it rises back onto its feet. His blood glints the faintest green- blue in the light outside, so much darker than what oozes from her own flank. _Even after his sacrifice, Zoe’s influence is still cursing my body_ . 

Xayah swallows, closes her eyes to collect herself briefly, and opens them again. 

She's summoning new quills when she notices it, staring at the black seeping up her shaking arm. She stumbles back, staring down in horror. _The light, his light he had given he_r - it’s fading away from her skin. 

Another low growl; Xayah’s head snaps up just in time. She throws her arms up just before Rakan slams into her. A _crack _of splitting wood and the fence finally gives, sending them both careening down the steep incline of the hill to the ditch below. She’s seeing stars as rocks scratch at her skin, brambles tear at her hair. Then, the sensation like she’s wrapped in a blanket, something holding on firm at her back as they continue to roll. 

Abruptly, they hit the bottom of the ditch, and the air is shoved out of Xayah’s lungs in a single blast. It feels like she’s been kicked in the diaphragm, and she’s seeing black spots, while the world is still a blur from their tumble. 

She coughs and tries to settle her seizing lungs. Blinks against the flickering sky. 

_Wait, where is_ \- ? 

Xayah looks down. 

Her arms are trapped, held to her body from the feather cape wrapped around her. Most of the weight on her wasn’t just from being winded, but rather from a _literal body_ resting atop her. The shade’s head is laying against her shoulder. She pushes out and up, Rakan doesn’t budge. 

_Is he - ?_

She pushes up again with both hands against the shade’s chest, emits a high-pitched chirp from the back of her throat, more like a squeak than any actual communication. 

The shade shifts. 

It’s back lifts up, unwraps the cape from around her. It slides over her skin like a whisper, leaving black streaks behind. He repositions, shifting on the dirt to hover over her on all fours, pins her hips with its thighs, hands pistoned over each shoulder. Every breath it takes is slow, making it’s torso shake. Xayah cringes, looks off to each side. _Down here_ , _I’m alone_. 

It’s hand - more claw than hand, now - drops from her shoulder to hover over her wounded belly. The sharp, curled talons touch so lightly against her skin that she can’t feel it over the steady stabbing sensation. 

Her breath hitches, _ it’d be so easy for those claws to sink into her fragile skin there and _ _end it._ Tear out her liver, her lungs. But it doesn’t, stuck frozen where it’s above her. The sky lights the shade up like flashing lightning, golden eyes stark against his shadowed face. 

_Maybe…._

“Mieli.” Xayah says, very quietly. His head tilts ever so slightly and his ears twitch, but he makes no other response. His left hand still rests over her flank wound. One of Zoe’s shots had opened her there, a chunk of missing flesh, and he holds his hand over it. _Trying to heal me, even like this?_

For a moment it becomes less distinct, the shadows dispersing as his hand glows a light purple, then stops.The shade makes a grunt, its entire body shudders, and then the hand glows again, even briefer, and stops, it’s chest heaving twice as hard as before. The black of his skin swirls and disperses, occasionally flaking off, ash falling to the earth. 

The pain from her side has lessened. Not by much, but enough for her to notice the difference. 

_He **is **healing me, _ Xayah realizes abruptly. She’s slow when she reaches up with her free hand, her other arm still trapped under its weight, but it doesn’t react until her fingertips brush his face. In one awkward, jerky movement he flinches back, and her heart clenches. The noise he makes is so quiet she almost doesn’t catch it, but the _sound_ \- 

She pulls her hand back away sharply at the noise, and he ducks, eyes flickering. She can’t unhear the fearful peep that had dragged from his throat, the wavering noise of _terror _he’d made when she’d reached \- 

Xayah swallows hard and firms herself, closing her eyes tight and then opening them again. Her fingertips are cold when she clenches her hand against her chin, where they’d touched him. He’s still cowering on top of her, like he’s trying to simultaneously pull himself into the most unthreatening shape possible while still keeping her on the ground. 

Carefully, she reaches up slowly for his face again. Her hand meets coldness, and Rakan presses his cheek into the touch for the briefest of moments, golden eyes flickering away. _Has he closed them_? Amongst the minor shifting and swirling of the shade’s form, she can’t tell. 

His skin is cold and dry to her fingertips. Still, as she gently moves her fingers to cup his face she can feel him shaking. Her throat isn’t used to the noise that she tries to make, and it comes out wrong, but the croon must still be something comforting because he abruptly buries his face into her hand. She’s almost shocked by it, as he stretches himself out over her and grabs desperately at her wrist. 

His claws are so, so gentle with her. The tiny sniffs and quiet chirps of desperation he’s letting out tear into her heart harder than any weapon ever could, and she finds herself making stupid soothing shushes as she rubs at his cheek. 

_ Zoe is wrong, he has to still be still in there somewhere. Zoe is a liar, she manipulates. Even this husk can recognise her, remember her _ . 

“Mieli - “ Her voice cracks, but she forces the words out all the same. “ - I love you.” 

His ears flick downward as his eyes open again, more vivid this time, shiny, and she watches as he lowers his face down towards her neck. She moves her newly freed arm to gently slip her fingers through his blood-matted hair, rub softly over his hurt ears. He doesn’t flinch this time. 

There’s sniffling at her neck. Xayah breathes in harshly as she feels the wetness there, warm droplets running down her neck into her cape. 

_Rakan_ ? 

She can’t help it. He needs her, even like this. She slides her arms over his back, hugs him tight against her. A shudder slips up his spine and he holds still for several moments, then turns his face from her neck, down to where her gem is clasped onto her cape. 

He breathes over her gem, warm air in the cold night. Xayah shivers. Her mind goes to other times, times before Zoe, and she slips her hand back into his hair, rubs gently over his bloodied ear. He’s purring, but it’s more warbling and uneven, some faltering vibration in his chest that hiccups when his chest moves, hitching halfway through each time. It reminds her distantly of the many bruised ribs he’d had, the many battles where things had pierced his lungs and left him struggling to breathe. She has to drop her hands before her grip tightens enough to hurt him. 

His lips are cold. They settle over her gem like an open-mouthed kiss to her heart, and she can feel it, deeper than anything. The cold is piercing, nothing like the warmth she is used to, and her soul still sports a void, his spot still empty and forlorn. Her thighs part, spreading open like it could entice him to come closer, as if contact could fill her heart once again. He settles on top of her, and for a second it feels almost warm. 

Near like this, he seems… kind-of normal. The shadows seem to be fizzling off of him, like a dark mist burning away to reveal true flesh around his face, though he still looks as though she’s seeing him through a shadowy filter._ Not quite, but close enough_. 

She shakes as he settles over her on one forearm, the other hand sliding from her wound to place it more to her side. His body dips down, dropping more to cover her. 

Xayah twitches when she feels his teeth scrape gently over her gem, his tongue almost warm compared to the cold of his lips. She lets out a rattling sigh, her head falling back even as her heart tightens. She squeezes her eyes shut. _Stop, _some part of her whispers. _ That’s not Rakan._

"Snap out of it!" 

Gunfire. 

Xayahs head snaps up, and Rakan flinches as black spatters from his chest. He crumples over her, dead weight on her far too familiar. 

_Mieli?_

Xayah instinctively tries to reach to help him; but the glow of his face is already gone, dim star cut out, head lolling limply off her gem. She’s pinned under him for real now. She stares at the empty space of his eyes and the dark of where the star used to light up the contours of his face; right up until he's shifted off of her by the strong kick of a gold and white boot, and someone grabs her by the arm to pull her up. 

She can’t _breathe_. Her hand scratches over her own chest, digging into her skin, watching the black blood seep out into the dirt, almost reaching her wrapped feet. Xayah opens her mouth; but words won’t come, and her breaths come shallow, quick and useless. _Come back. Get up_. The other shades, they had been getting back up within a minute of being killed, and kept doing so until they were burned or blasted into pieces too small to rejoin. _Why won’t he get back up_? 

There’s spots in her vision again, the edges of her sight blurring. She tries to reach down, but the grip under her arm keeps her standing. 

The sound of a slap. Then stinging on her left cheek. Xayah blinks, finally turns away and sees _red_. Some age old extinct of when she was last in a group of guardians having her expecting to see Sarah. Instead it's Jinx, face uncharacteristically serious, a scratch still beading drops of blood on her right cheek. Her hand is still held up, prepping another slap. 

“We don’t have time for this!! Wake up bird-brain, it didn’t get your gem, you’re fine!” 

Xayah frowns, looking down. 

Her chest is coated in the blood black as ink, and she can see her blood amidst the mess. She knows that most of it is Rakans, and her heart crumples like a soda can. She looks up and back towards the hill they had tumbled down; Sarah is standing at the top, staring down at her dispassionately. 

Soraka runs past Sarah, jumping and gliding with her wings down to land next to them. She takes Xayah’s head, tilts it side to side in her hands to examine her face. She blinks at the healer slowly, and Soraka refocuses onto her flank wound. 

Poppy is standing next to Sarah now, a steadfast guard, and Jinx is already moving away again, guns red hot and ready to fire as she flies back up out of the ditch. 

"Not friendly fire this time, right?" Soraka says finally, "Hmm… did Janna try healing you first? It’s faint, but I can sense the residue of their magic.” 

Xayah still can’t trust herself to speak. She only nods. Soraka holds up her staff, and channels green magic to her palm with a gentle glow. 

Soraka’s brows furrow. Xayah stares down at the wound, the seething green that rises up against Soraka’s like a whip. The healer flinches back, then frowns. “Feedback, maybe.” She murmurs to herself, then tries again. It works this time, but Xayah tenses up slowly as Soraka heals her, teeth clenched into the pain of two entirely different types of healing magic working on her wounds. 

Still, though it obviously takes effort, Soraka knits the wound enough that Xayah can stand on her own. Her hands pull away, but Xayah can still feel the statick-y buzz of something remaining, some residue on her skin holding her together. 

“Good as new.” Soraka smiles at her, but she seems tired, exhausted even; it pulls at her eyes wrong, her face looking tight. This battle has been long. If it didn’t end soon, they’d be beaten by exhaustion rather than injury. 

“Incoming!” Ezreal shouts from somewhere up out of the ditch, out of her vision. She’d been distracted long enough - it was time to return to the fight. 

Soraka helps her climb back up to the main battleground. 

Poppy and Lulu have set up some kind of tiny safe zone, Poppy’s barrier and Lulu’s shield above her keeping them temporarily safe from showers of dark matter. The small neighborhood street and front yard is now covered with fleshy pieces of destroyed void creatures, autumn yellowing-lawns stained black in places from shade blood. Some parts of the street and yards are torn apart entirely, like they’d been hit by tiny meteors that left craters in their wake. The consecrated area Soraka had cast to root the not-Ahri in place has disappeared. _ Did they realise she was a false shade? Or did it simply escape?_ Either way, Xayah cannot spot it around the battlefield. 

Their world is still off, like they’ve slipped into an alternate dimension. Xayah briefly wonders if Zoe only bothered to do that for their bubble, or if the regular humans could tell something was amiss. 

Though, if Zoe had stolen enough star guardian gems to be able to thrust a planet as big as Valoren into her own chaotic reality… then it would be too late to stop her anyway. 

Ezreal is barely noticeable besides flashes of blue as he portals in and out, tossing balls of frosty cyan magic at the few remaining void creatures. 

But Zoe is the main event, floating up in the air, sitting on air in the lotus position, surrounded by her own purple barrier that shimmered like prismatic glass. She appears to be checking her fingernails, bored. 

Xayah turns to watch as Lux and Jinx move up with him into the fight, pushing back a final wave with Sarah. Soraka and Janna are already moving to meet up with the shortest guardians, and abruptly Xayah is alone. They’re more concerned about the fight - Soraka is already soothing a wound up Ezreal’s side, Lux and Janna are holding a barrier over them, temporarily shielding from whatever Zoe irregularly launches their way, and Lulu is helping as well, little cheeks puffed with the effort as she enforces the barrier. 

Syndra is standing a little way from the group, using her familiar to hit away any floating insectoid blobs from coming close. She turns her head and then she locks eyes with Xayah. Eyes meeting before moving away; two ships passing in the night. Syndra’s eyepatch seems to be almost glowing, and for once she isn’t grinning. Xayah understands. 

Syndra knows, just as well as she does. Zoe is just playing around. But she’s bound to get bored eventually, and when that happens.... 

Empty. She’s so _empty_. 

Xayah places a hand over where the wound Zoe had made. Soraka had said she was fine, but it didn’t feel right. It still felt - 

A dark star gleams overhead, sending its gaze at her. 

_ Awww, she’s gone already?!? What a shame. I was hoping you’d both still be alive. _

That voice._ Zoe_. 

Xayah jolts her neck from left to right. Everyone’s still there, still fighting. Though their sounds are muffled as if she’s wearing earmuffs. 

_Please. Help her_ . 

Rakan’s voice is tight, wavering and weak. She wasn’t prepared to hear it; it shreds through her insides, tearing her as though she’s been shot. 

This is from then. The scene she only managed to glimpse from his memories through the link before he’d block it off. 

_No introductions first? Wow, you must be in a hurry!_

She clenches her hands, feeling that dark creeping up from her spine and over her back. She needs to move, get as far from Zoe as possible. Would that even help? All of this inverse bubble was under her control, whether she runs out of line of sight or not it would likely make no difference. 

_Please… I’ll give you anything_ . 

The corruption is spreading up from her old wound, she can see it on her skin, beating against her like solar rays. That darkness is spreading up the back of her neck and staining her hair dark. Jumping from ribs to her spine like her body is a trellis for it to climb. 

_ No. Rakan didn’t want this. He wanted her to be free. How dare Zoe try to get her back, to undo his sacrifice _ ? 

The anger burns, like embers after a fire. Xayah’s ears lift, and she twitches, shaking as she hears the sounds of the husks around her. They sound almost liquid - wrong, an undefinable sound coming from them that makes the world feel queasy. 

She leaps up high, wings spread, and with a scream she launches a flurry of feathers towards where the god-child floats, purging the darkness from her body into more knives as she attacks. They hit the barrier with a sound like hailstones hitting glass. The barrier looks completely unscratched, but sounds are no longer muffled, the distraction has freed her, at least temporarily. 

A scream of rage so high pitched Xayah has to cover her ears. Zoe’s barrier shatters into a thousand pieces of sharp glass, laces her with tiny cuts before she can lift up her cape. She drops back down onto the road, raises her cape to shield the rest of her body. 

The others; she can peek from under her wing. Her light colours are restored, at least for now, and she feels the weight on her shoulders ease. She was vulnerable now, but she needs to at least last through this. 

Zoe is now officially in the fight. 

She soars down, hair trailing behind her, like tendrils of dark matter, glinting from the gems carried within like tiny stars. 

Lulu waves her wand; a shield forms around Ezreal as he portals forwards, blinking through reality, flinging whips of his augmentative magic; if one hit, any subsequent hits hurt more. 

Zoe ducks and spins out of the way of his attacks. 

“Nu-uh, no more portals allowed! I can’t make exceptions, not even for pretty boys.” 

She whips a spiral of dark magic towards him. Ezreal yelps and tries to portal away, instinct trumping everything else. 

The rim of this portal is purple, different from his usual neon blue. He drops in. It closes with a _zzzwip_. He doesn’t reappear. No exit portal pops out of the air, metres away in any direction. 

Zoe waves cutely at where the portal had been, then flips up to avoid a shot from Sarah’s gun. 

“Ez?!” 

Sarah and Lux both yell out at the same time. Xayah jumps to the side to avoid a sleep bubble, rolls then gets back to her feet. 

This was it. Zoe was tired of playing with them, now it’d be just like before. 

The earth shakes. Xayah sees Lulu stumble and fall onto the ground, along with Poppy. Cracks spread across the pavement, widening as asphalt and earth fall into the widening maw, the cracking as loud as an earthquake. 

An appendage, dark and slimy slides out of the crack. Then another, then another. It undulates as it moves, creeping up to grasp against the ground leaving shiny trails where it touches. Welts line its flesh, with what appears to be a white dot at the center. _Spikes_, she knew from prior experience. At a second’s notice the creature could expel them and skewer even stone with ease, then retract them back into hiding. 

_ At least if you were grabbed it would be fast. Rakan had been swat away by this thing _ , she recalls. _Years ago_. He had been thrown across the arena, hitting the rock wall of a nearby bluff. Red had bloomed from him, from his stomach, and she had watched until he had stood back up onto his feet. 

_His hand had been out. Then… she had been grabbed_ . She thinks. After that it’s scrambled, the pieces of the story tossed and put in the wrong places. Amongst them, the only clear parts were the few seconds of looking up at his face. Then, nothing. 

The body of Zoe’s pet was now pulling itself free. With a fleshy pop it’s bulbous head emerges completely from the scism. Dark as a raisin, it’s infinity-shaped pupil stood out amongst the yellow of the rest of the eye. 

It’s easy a hundred feet tall. _Same as before_. _ Each spike would easily be two feet_, her brain helpfully reminds her. 

Xayah hears Jinx yell something that she’s sure is; _ugh gross! Please, let’s kill it! _Before following it up with rhythmic pop pop pops from her mini-gun. She has to try not to laugh. 

The baby-guardians start formation, same as ever, as if this was just another mission. Zoe jumping and portaling around her pet. 

The giant octopus lifts up a little out of the crack, contorting back so it’s mouth could be seen. A pit of yellow, needle-sharp teeth. Then, it shrieks. Windows in the floating cars shatter. Xayah shoves her hands against her ears, doubling over as she braces. Grass moves against her legs; the air itself is vibrating, it resonates in her chest, bounces back and forth like ping-pong in her stomach. 

_She’s open like this. Not good_ . 

Xayah forces herself to look up. The other guardians are reacting similarly to the far left of her. She sees Zoe, peeking out from behind the fourth tentacle. _Really not good_. 

The tentacle rears up, smashes down towards where the guardians are grouped, like a set of unsteady bowling pins. Janna raises her staff, and a blast of air pushes everyone into different directions, scattered out of formation. 

Poppy is closest, she swings her hammer at the tentacle. It stops its scream when struck, thankfully, but then the appendage reared back to swat her like an annoying fly. Poppy jumps up, dodges the first, but is hit by the blunt side of the backswing. Stunned, the small blue guardian is launched back a few feet, but gets back up after only a few seconds. 

Soraka starts to sprint over towards where Poppy had fallen, her staff out and glowing; a bubble soars out from under a tentacle and hits her square in the back, popping in an innocuous spray of glitter. The tentacle that had previously hit Poppy redirects to creep towards the guardian, grabbing her by her waist and lifting her off the ground. 

Sarah starts shooting wildly at the arm but the octopus doesn’t seem to care, carrying the sleeping guardian up towards it’s main body. Sarah’s bullets pass through, the holes they make drip blue blood for a few seconds, but then heal over nearly as fast. 

Poppy makes one last dive, jumping up and grabbing one of Soraka’s legs, trying to pull her free. Her body does not budge, and the muscles of the thing tighten visibly. 

“Stop!” Lux shouts, “it’ll hurt her!” 

Poppy lets go and drops onto the ground with a thud. Lux throws out another blast of binding magic but it doesn’t seem to affect the tentacle at all, continuing to lift the green gem farther and farther out of reach. The cars floating in the air, suspended by Zoe’s field of selective gravity are a tempting target. Poppy dashes to behind a sky blue car, and with a big heft of her hammer launches it flying towards the head of the octopus like she’s serving in tennis. 

The octopus bats the car back, and both Poppy and Sarah have to dive out of the way. It hits the ground with a crash, roof dented in a metre deep. 

Xayah starts running a periphery around the monster, throwing feathers into whatever fleshy piece of the thing she can hit, for what little it was worth. 

Another shower of bubbles, Poppy’s hit; she takes a few more steps before being overwhelmed by the magic, dropping onto the grass. She too is grabbed by a free tentacle, held out of reach. 

Another bubble zips her way, Xayah dives to dodge it, and it pops, showering glitter over an empty patch of pavement. Still, the area wouldn’t be safe to walk over for a minute or two more. 

_Did the baby guardians know that? Syndra probably did, but_ \- 

“Watch where you step!” Xayah shouts, though she’s not certain if any of them can hear her anyway over all the fighting. “Where the bubbles land; her magic - !” 

Something shoots past her from behind, glancing off the left side of her throat and cutting her sentence short before striking and embedding into a telephone pole near her. Xayah only notes it for a quatre-second before agony blossoms from her neck. 

Her hand flies up to put pressure on the spot. Warmth is leaking out around her fingers. She looks frantically about the area, for the sight of the tween god.Xayah spots her, sitting on top of a floating stop-sign, kicking her feet. Zoe winks, a finger at her lips, throws another sleepy bubble onto the ground next to Xayah’s feet, then drops backwards off into a portal, reappearing back atop her giant octopus. 

Xayah takes a step back, even though it’s obvious she was out of the spell’s radius. The world is blurring, more than what was Zoe’s original doing. 

_ If I die here, does Zoe get me back again? What happens to Rakan? His gem? _

“Look out!” 

This time one of the octopus’ arms are dropping, meant for her. Her steps are wobbly, she takes a few steps before everything appears to be spinning. 

A gust of air sends her back a few feet. She lands on her back, heaving for air. _Focus. You’ve been here before, you’re fine. Just breathe_. 

Janna is flying towards her, staff held upwards. A swirling cyclone holds the tentacle at bay. It retracts and swipes in a different direction, left towards the rest of the group. Janna gets closer, her other hand outstretched. 

Closer to where Zoe had put the bubble. 

Xayah spits the blood from her mouth. 

“Stop!” She shouts. 

Janna steps over the spot. It lights up in a swirl of black and dark purple, shadowy hands rising from the spot to grab her. She pales immediately, looks down at her feet, before closing her eyes and falling onto the pavement. Another tentacle drops down, picks her up, brings her out of reach. Several voices yell out, but like with the others their attacks do nothing to release their companion. 

Xayah stays lying on her back a moment. Surely she would be next grabbed, pulled away from the others. 

It doesn’t come. She waits, but it’s distracted with the others. Keeping one hand tight to her neck, he digs her feet and free arm into the ground, manages to lift herself up and back a half foot before going back flat onto the pavement. 

She can’t draw too much attention to herself. Not that she can do much fighting like this right now anyway. _She can get somewhere safe, maybe, and then_…. 

_And then what_ ? 

Xayah can hear more spells being fired off, more yells of alarm. 

_They’re young. They’re panicking. We did too_ . 

“Get up.” 

Xayah gingerly tilts her head back. It’s Syndra. With a grand wave of her arm, she sends her orbs flying off to pop against Zoe’s giant familiar. 

_Is she being serious_ ? 

Xayah manages to sit, biting her lip as the head rush hits her hard and makes everything blur. When she’s sitting for a few seconds too long, Syndra scoffs and grabs her by the arm, yanks her to her feet. Once she is standing Syndra pulls her arm over her shoulder, the older guardian practically dragging her back towards the others. 

“Use the dark matter to heal. I know you can.” Syndra hisses. For a moment Xayah thinks she imagined the other girl saying it. _Of course she’d know about that_. She opens her mouth to speak, but all she can taste is blood at the back of her tongue, and coughs. She shakes her head, words failing her. 

She can’t, not when it could erode what little light Rakan had entrusted to her. 

Syndra stares a moment at her, then her frown deepens. She removes her support, dipping out from underneath her arm. Xayah’s legs wobble like a newborn fawns; she sinks to her knees, keeping a hand pushing tight against her neck, crawls to take shelter behind the crushed car. The others are not too far away, Lulu standing farther back, knees knocking slightly together. Sarah and Jinx are positioned to the side of the car, shooting a constant line of suppressing fire, keeping another tentacle from slamming down atop them. Lux sends out an occasional spell, but she appears to be waiting with her staff, defensive spells at the ready. 

_Where’s Zoe_ ? 

“We need to retreat.” 

Sarah’s shoulders are set hard, her arms unnaturally stiff even as she continues to shoot. The deja vu hits Xayah hard, and all she can think about is Ahri, echoing the same sentiment. Her eyes slip closed. She keeps her hand on her neck, but she’s not sure if it’s really helping. 

_ Retreat… retreat to what? Leave another team behind? How many years before they could come back and try to fight again _ ? They might not even get that chance. _Zoe would not be so lenient a second time_. 

“Not without the others.” 

_ Lux then. Already more loyal than Ahri… then. Or dumber. Zoe will have them all by the end of the night. _

The arguing continues, but Xayah fades them out. It doesn’t really matter. She would wake up in darker colours, and Rakan would be there, holding her. _Just like before_. 

Someone else is touching her, small hands pushing at her neck. 

“Lux? She’s hurt.” 

Xayah opens her eyes. Lulu is looking at her, concern making her eyes wide and shiny. Pity strikes her, and she tries to sit up straighter, bring herself to alertness. _I need to stay awake. I can’t give up yet._

_I’m sorry Mieli._

She takes a slow breath, concentrates on what light in her she can feel, and twists it. Pulls it back. Almost immediately, the negative space is filled by the festering nothing, the rot of antimatter, and she cringes as she feels it creep over her neck, spreading thin over the skin. 

Lux looks over. Her jaw drops open. 

“Xayah! When did - “ 

“Don’t panic. She could have healed herself.” Syndra snaps, not bothering to look over, sending more spells toward the giant cephalopod. “Just leave her. She wanted this.” 

“So little is left. She only wanted to keep it safe.” Lulu protests, but someone shushes her. 

“Lulu,” Lux says, “watch over Xayah.” 

“No. I’m fine.” Xayah swallows a few times, touches her own throat to double check. The wound hadn’t so much as closed over as gummed up. It still bled, but much more sluggishly, the surrounding skin is sticky to her fingers. 

Next. She closes her eyes, searching deep. 

Riku is still there. Curled up, asleep, taking up a sliver of the space Rakan had left. She presses her palms to her eyes, releases her held breath shakily. 

_Still with me_ . 

A shrill shriek, grating as silverware scratching porcelain. The familiar rears back, slams into the ground. The crack it crawled from spreads towards them, eating up the road and splitting the ground a meter wide. 

The trio jump back, temporarily halting their assault. 

Light seems to be emitted from the crack. A soft orange glow. _A hallucination? Or..._

“We need to leave!” Sarah shouts again, tendons visible on her neck. She spins her guns in her hands, pointer hovering on the triggers. 

“We can’t leave.” Syndra’s voice is cool. If she’s worried, she doesn’t betray it. “Like it or not, we can’t get away now. Our only option is to fight.” 

“She’s right.” Xayah says. She holds the handle of the car door to pull herself to her feet, Lulu holding onto her legs. “The reality she’s warped will loop us back in if we try to leave.” 

At her voice, the others all look to her quickly, as if surprised she could speak. Lulu lets go, taps herself with her wand to give a temporary shield, and takes a few steps forward to peer at the widening fissure. 

“Xayah, you know Zoe well. More than any of us...” Lux says. The pink leader is dishevelled, pigtails drooping. Syndra wrinkles her nose, then turns her head away. 

“Hurry it up Luxy.” Jinx is staring at the wide crack warily. 

“ - I…” Lux straightened her shoulders, clears her throat. “Does she keep her promises?“ 

Hands burst out of the crack, black and spindly, with inhumanly long talons. They reach, jerking and random. Xayah can hear groaning, a constant layered gurgling, not unlike the sounds of the shades Zoe had summoned earlier. 

_Is it shades in the crack? Or is it something else_ ? 

Lulu cries out - one of the arms has her by the leg. Lux and Jinx leap forward, grabs her by each arm, pulls back, their feet skidding. Sarah shoots the air above: starlight rains down in tiny pellets and the hands withdraw, shrinking back into their crevice at the contact. Lulu jolts free, and Lux and Jinx fall back onto their behinds, the small green guardian landing on top of them. There’s red finger-marks left on her leg, fading slow. 

“Are you okay?” Lux hastens to her feet, helps pull Lulu up alongside herself and Jinx. 

Lulu nods rapidly, picks her wand back up from the ground. Pix is clinging to the bow on her head, making it droop. 

Xayah hears Zoe giggle; it drifts over the rest of the sound, discordant. It wavers and warps, just like the rest of reality within this bubble; like the light from the moon, like the rippling of the ground. She looks to Ran; three of its tentacles are occupied, but it still left five. More than enough for the rest of them. It’s being surprisingly immobile. With five free arms it would be more than possible to move from where it’s planted in the middle of the cul-de-sac street. Xayah looks back at the others. 

It starts to move its arms, raising up three free tentacles into the air, for another strike. It pops out the spikes on its empty limbs, off-white gleaming green in the moonlight. 

Lux is watching the over-sized familiar too, higher up where her teammates are trapped. 

“We need to get them back.” 

“With Zoe still alive?” Syndra rolls her eyes. “We should focus on fighting her, not Ran.” 

“Listen, I got it! I’ll just shoot a huge rocket!” Jinx’s eyes are alight. 

“Our attacks have been soaked up by this thing all night.” Sarah shoots a bright red bullet towards the Octopus’ body to prove a point; it hits the flesh with a squelch, a chunk of flesh flies off, a spray of dark blue blood, but as they watch it grows back in only a few seconds. 

“ - Uh, into its mouth. _Duh_.” 

The three limbs slam downwards. Xayah sprints to the left along with Lulu and Lux. The spikes of one arm is stuck in the pavement. Second and third pull free, asphalt crumbling from their spikes, sending rocks skittering onto the remaining pieces of road. The arms follow them as they run, slamming against the ground in turn. 

“The second I see its ugly face, I’ll shoot it!” Jinx yells from _somewhere_, clearly not caring whether Zoe hears. 

A tentacle fractures the road right behind their feet, shockwaves making the ground shift. Xayah stubs her toe on the uneven ground but jumps; managing to clear it without falling and breaking momentum. 

A yelp from Lulu. Xayah turns her head. The small guardian is on the ground again. Lux doubles back to pull her up. 

Another tentacle drops in front of her, effectively blocking them in between the two arms, and blocking Xayah out. She throws a line of star-knives - they slice neatly into the slimy appendage, but fall out a few seconds later as the healing flesh pushes them out. 

_ Checkmate for Zoe. She only really wants Lux - the others are a bonus, but expendable _ . 

Xayah throws another line of knives at one of the trapping tentacles and recalls them immediately. A larger chunk of flesh sloughs off and fizzles away, but she came nowhere close to amputating an entire limb. She hears both girls scream as they’re both grabbed by separate arms. 

“Damn it!” Xayah recalls another seven daggers. No use. 

Ran seems to notice her then, an annoying mosquito pricking at him, and one of his other free appendages drops to bat at her. Xayah tears away, calves burning as she ducks and weaves, trying to keep a clear line of sight on the two of them. 

“Huge-ify!” Lulu yells. 

A cascade of green sparkles. Lux has doubled in size; she drops free from the tentacle’s grip - probably more from Ran being caught off-guard than anything else. Drops back onto the ground, still embiggened from Lulu’s spell. 

She looks up; her own staff held out then left to float in front of her, heels of both palms resting against each other, palms pointing out flat. The space between her hands begins to glow. Xayah halts her attack, daggers still left between her fingers, her run slowing to a stop. 

A concentrated burst of light magic bursts forward from Lux’s palms, blinding like a flash of lightning. Blink and then it’s gone. The air hums with energy, sending goosebumps to wash over her. The smell of seared fish. Where she had aimed there was only a stump; the detached limb skitters and stutters on the ground, Lulu wiggling out from under it. Dark blue is splashed all over their uniforms. 

The blast had been bigger than before, wide enough to entirely sever off the lower half of the tentacle. _Because of her increased size_? This was the same thing that Rakan... 

Ran roars. Xayah shirks back, dropping her daggers to cover her ears a few seconds too late; there’s a high-pitched ringing, ping-ponging back and forth in her skull. She can barely see Sarah fly up from the other side of the gargantuan familiar, guns pointed out. The edges of her pistols flash red; a split second warning. She shoots a steady spray of stars towards Ran’s face. 

_A distraction? Lulu and Lux were still far too close for comfort_ . Lux is still big, she picks up Lulu with one arm and starts to run out towards Sarah. Xayah back pedals until her back hits a red mini-van, keeps her eyes on the familiar. She looks to the far-left - Jinx is standing with her rocket launcher out, halfway between herself and Sarah. 

Ran moves his arms carrying the sleeping guardians over to block the attack. Sarah drops her guns, cutting off the barrage. Then the rest of its body flails, spiked limbs flying every which way. Lux drops Lulu to cast a barrier just as she’s struck across the back - she shrinks back to normal size with an audible _pop_, and is thrown hard across the ground, her body landing and skidding across the pavement for a few feet before rolling onto the grass of the old house’s front lawn. One of Ran’s uninjured tentacles creeps forward to grab her. 

The others yell out _Lux_! Jinx’s voice the most distinct. Jinx sprints towards the pink gem, dives in front of her just at the last second. 

The tentacle wraps around the lanky guardian, enveloping her body in seconds. Lux cries out, tries to hit the tentacle with her staff, but Ran slaps her away, and the small leader is hit back another several metres, rolling into a drainage ditch. The tentacle retracts quick after that, and then Jinx is gone like the others. 

But Ran isn’t done his tantrum yet. Xayah drops onto her stomach; feels the rush of air over her head as his swing just misses her. Then the sound of metal being crushed; pieces of glass rain down upon her as she shields her eyes. 

When she peeks up; Ran’s damaged arm has grown back in full, and three tentacles have burrowed into the glowing crack. Sarah and Syndra are providing covering fire, trying to keep Ran at bay. Lux is still out of sight. _Was she knocked unconscious_? 

The ground rumbles. Xayah feels it shake, like something deep down is tunneling beneath them, moving to push to the surface. The shades are finally managing to crawl through the fissure, but they’re different than before. Their forms are semi-fused, three or more creatures connected and melded from the forced healing with dark matter, leaving them a writhing mass of limbs and conjoined heads. 

Xayah slowly stands, creeps around to the back of the van, half crouched. Her neck is stinging. She places a hand against it; it comes away wet, the entire hand stained. _Ah… it’s reopened_. She peeks over the side of the van’s cover, towards the others. They don’t seem to notice she’s gone: Syndra is busy with Ran, Sarah is busy running the circumference just outside of the familiar’s reach, luring what shades make it out of the crack towards her before shooting them. 

_Delaying the inevitable_ . _We’ve lost too much to have hope of winning, now._

_Unless..._

Blocked by the destroyed van, she steadies herself. Her hand itches to apply pressure against her throat, but she forces herself to put it back down to rest at her side. _ A distraction. That’s what they needed. Out of everyone, Zoe would respond to me _ . _She wouldn’t be able to resist_. _If I can gain her trust, I can get close enough to stab her_. 

“Zoe! I know you can hear me! Come out! We need to talk.” 

A portal; dark purple and checkered appears in the ground in front of her. Zoe flies out, hair streaming like a kite. She does a little spin, then puts a hand to her forehead, like she’s shielding her eyes, surveying the scene. 

“Wow!” Zoe looks her up and down. “Deja vu! This is like when we first met. Except…something’s missing.” 

She snaps her fingers, and another portal opens up in the sky. A shape drops out and lands onto the pavement; she hears bones crunch, and the thing twitches as it struggles to get up. The pang strikes her core, worse than her bleeding neck, worse than her side. If she doesn’t do something he’d be trapped in that purgatory forever, being brought back again and again and again. Zoe’s words echo in her mind. _More is lost each time_. 

“This is more like it! Took me a while to find him, by the way. You’re welcome.” 

Xayah doesn’t look at him. She watches Zoe instead, stares at the bright purple lipstick. 

“I changed my mind.” 

She speaks clearly, spits the words out slow. 

“Oh?” Zoe rests her chin on her fist, hops into the air and floats, suspended with no difficulty. 

“Weird. You’re not the type to yo-yo.” She spins a ball of dark matter in her left hand, dribbles it down on a string of starlight, then it rolls back up. “Get it? Yo-yo?” She laughs. 

Xayah cringes. She hears the whistling; she wants to call back, make a treble warble, like that would soothe him. 

“I thought you liked him like this.” Zoe shrugs. Xayah bites her tongue. 

_Don’t react. She wants a reaction_ . 

“He’s no good now for conversation.” 

“That’s what you liked him for? Huh. I never would have guessed.” 

Xayah inhales through her nose, looks up at the tan sky. 

“Can you fix him or not?” 

“That depends.” Zoe’s eyes narrow; her orange pupil gleams, like it could see right through the fabric of the universe. “Are we friends?” 

She holds out her hand, waits expectantly. 

_Another deal with the devil_ . She wouldn’t get free of this one. The gems in Zoe’s hair glimmer. Empty souls. Even their names would be lost to them. 

Would Zoe kill her again, seep her in a darkness so potent she couldn’t be recovered? Her heart would grow cold again, and… 

Rakan would be hurt. She’d insult him, ignore him. Leave him to die without a second thought. 

But he would be _fixed. _

It was worth it. How many times had he given himself up for her? This would prove her love for him. This would show him she was sorry - 

A voice then, from behind them. Sour and deadly. 

“I _knew_ it.” 

_Sarah_ . 

Zoe pulls her hand back, she’s beaming at something over Xayah’s shoulder. 

“I’ll leave you both to it! Bye-bye!” 

Zoe snaps a portal into being and blinks out of existence just as a glowing bullet bursts where she had been previously hovering. Xayah twists around and Sarah swaps targets, her twin guns fixating to hold steady, pointing at her core. Her skirt is torn in several places and she’s covered all over with patches of mud and what looks to be either ink or shade-blood. 

The red gem takes a few cautious steps forward, stopping while still a few metres away. _Close enough for a sure shot_. 

“I should have shot you back at the park. But I hoped… after what he did for you...” Sarah jerks her arm to the side and waves a gun at the shade still toiling to get back on its feet. “You’d go back to Zoe after everything? What the hell is wrong with you??!” 

Xayah tries to take a step to the side, closer to Rakan, but Sarah yanks her second gun back to aim at her. 

“I wasn’t - “ 

“ - Shut up!” 

Xayah stills. Blood drips warm down her neck, soaks into the shoulder of her uniform. Sarah’s arms are twitching, her feet planted wide. 

“We’re going to die here, and you only care about that _thing_.” She practically spits the words, her eyes hard. The others are still caught up with Ran, though the sounds of their fighting has picked up. _Zoe must be back with her pet_. Xayah worries her lip, eyes sliding back over to Rakan. _That was my only chance_. 

A pop from the gun barrel; there’s a new hole in the pavement beside her feet. 

“Look at me!!” Sarah’s shaking. “Think of who you’re abandoning! Why won’t you help us?” 

“That’s funny, coming from you.” Xayah snaps back. She’s starting to feel dizzy again, the patch-job on her neck burned through. _ I can’t use dark matter again. It’s too risky_. 

Sarah abruptly stills. 

Suddenly her guns move off Xayah, both aiming slightly down and to the right. Xayah’s stomach tightens. 

“No!” 

She jumps to the side, intersecting sight lines. An explosion of pain from her thigh, it burns like the fire from a dark star, and her limb buckles under her, sending her down onto the pavement. Rakan is whining, a high pitched whistling from his ribs accompanying the sound. Xayah gasps for air, then pushes herself up to sit in front of Rakan, her wings splaying weakly out to more effectively body block. 

Sarah takes a step back, dropping her guns after a long delay. 

“I - “ 

“- Wow! You’re ruthless!! I wish I had collected you years ago.” 

Zoe is sitting atop the van, swinging her feet back and forth so they rap against the metal. Her head tilts as she turns to look from Sarah to Xayah. “Oh, and If this was your idea of a distraction Xayah, it didn’t work bee-tee-dubs. You must think I’m dumb or something~” 

Sarah shoots another slug, Zoe whips back a magic missile. They collide and the bullet bursts in midair, shattering into pieces of incandescent dust. The child snickers, then waves her arm with a heavy flourish of her fingers. 

There’s a cry from one of the others, back at the center of the cul-de-sac. Sarah’s cheek twitches, but she keeps her eyes locked on Zoe. 

“What are you saying?” 

Zoe winks. She opens a portal with just a tap of her fingers against the roof of the van. 

“It looks like I’m not the only one who steals gems.” 

Sarah’s nostrils flare. She rains buckshot on top of the vehicle, the sound like heavy hailstones hitting tin, but Zoe has already dipped away, reality zipping shut behind her. 

The ground starts rumbling again, shaking and tilting, sections rising and falling unevenly as rock and asphalt crack. Sarah looks over her shoulder towards the rest of the guardians, then back at Xayah. 

“Don’t move. We’ll deal with you after.” 

Then she’s gone, sprinting back to the fight with Boku and Baki held ready. When she’s far enough away Xayah drops back down to lie on her side, wings merging back into her cloak. From where she lies she can barely see the others. She keeps one hand against her throat, giving up entirely on attempting to stanch the thigh wound. Her eyelids feel like they’re being weighed down with lead. 

The shade is keening. A few seconds later Xayah feels it settle down behind her, lying against her back. Every so often it nudges near her face, startling her back to alertness. 

“Shhhh….” She reaches her free hand back and pets slackly at its feathers, trying to soothe him. “I’m okay. I’m okay…” 

The pain crests, somehow it seems lessened with him so near. Xayah focuses on taking deep breaths. 

_Didn’t they realise by now that fighting Ran was useless_ ? __

Xayah rips part of her skirt off, ties it around her thigh wound. She shifts slightly to see around the side of the ruined van. Syndra is pinned by the shades, thrashing on the ground, grasped by their many hands while Sarah attempts to free her. _ Was Lux grabbed, or is she still unconscious? Though if she was taken, this fight would already be over _ . 

Zoe is in the center of attention now that most of Ran’s arms are full. The god-child blinks around the clearing without care after a sped-up Lulu, alternating sending out shots of magic or bubbles like it was a bizarre game of tag. 

She hits Lulu easily with a sleep bubble. The green gem collapses onto the ground seconds later, and Zoe leans down and plucks her star-gem off of her uniform. She pops the gem out of the shiny golden cover, rubs it against her shirt like one would shine an apple. Then she brings it to her lips. 

“Stop!!” 

Lux staggers up out of the ditch, no staff in her hands. Her pink hair has fallen out of her pigtails, and lies dirty and tangly to her shoulder blades. She limps forward, Sarah attempts to grab her arm but she side-steps out of the way. “Please, Zoe, don’t destroy her. I changed my mind. I’ll do it. Just stop.” 

Zoe lowers the gem from her mouth. She folds her hands together as a grin stretches a little too far across her face. 

Xayah grimaces -_ what was Lux doing? Making her own deal_?_ You offer Zoe a finger, she takes the entire arm_. _No exceptions_. 

“There you are. I knew you’d come out eventually - you’re pink, after all. Aren’t you cutting it a bit close?” 

Zoe floats down closer to the ground, spinning so her hair twirls about her briefly like a swirling nebula. She tosses Lulu’s gem into the air, then catches it with the same hand. 

“You - you need me to be voluntary, right? You said you need my gem last.” Lux keeps walking forwards, feet dragging against the uneven pavement. She stumbles a little, and stops. “That’s why you captured my sisters, instead of shattering them.” 

Zoe yawns, starts tapping her foot. 

“I offered you that before this whole fight started. But you hurt Ran, and wasted my time. So now…. I dunno!” 

“Please. I’ll… I’ll give you my gem. You know an intact pink is worth more. I’ll join you, I’ll help you. Just let everyone else go!” 

_How would she know that_ ? Xayah tries to sit up, cocks her ears towards them. _Did Syndra fill her in_? 

“Lux, stop!” Sarah reaches after her, but Zoe snaps her fingers and Ran drops a tentacle behind where the pink gem is standing, effectively cutting off the two older guardians. 

Zoe taps the point of Lulu’s gem against her chin. 

‘What about my bonded pair?” 

“I’ll do it myself. W-with Jinx.” Lux’s hands clench into fists that she clutches against her chest. She takes a single step closer. “We’ll be a new bonded pair. We’ll be your friends. We won’t try to leave you.” 

“My last set were pretty ungrateful....and intact pinks _are_ the jewels of my collection.” Zoe crosses her arms. 

Lux nods encouragingly. She unclips the star-case off her chest, and takes out her gem, leaving the shell to drop to the ground. Zoe’s right eye flashes when the pink hits the light. 

_She’s hungry._

“Do we… do we have a deal?” 

Zoe stares a moment longer. Then she drops Lulu’s gem, lets it fall carelessly back onto the green-yordle’s chest. She gestures for Lux to come closer. The leader-gem swallows, then limps forward, holding out the gem in her outstretched hand. 

_This was it then. This was the end_ . 

Lux stops right in front of Zoe. The child holds out her hand, and Lux places her gem into the child’s palm. Xayah holds her breath. 

Zoe’s grin immediately fades. Her eyes narrow into slits. 

“_What _\- “ 

Ribbons of light explode from under Lux’s feet. She jumps into the air, then slams down in a blinding flare of gold and pink. The force shoots out like a shockwave, dirt and rocks fly outwards from the blast, scratching as they whip past her skin. 

Xayah covers her eyes as Rakan makes a fearful sound, flinching against her back. She hears a _plink_ of something landing nearby. 

Then, silence. 

In less than a second, it’s over. 

There’s no screaming. Not even a curse. Xayah opens her eyes. 

Neeko is standing alone. Her body is glowing still, red-hot like a star. Next to her on the ground there is a small form, fizzling away like the end of a sparkler. Pieces of colored light float briefly above where she used to be, then the hundreds of tiny lights burst upwards, like miniature comets. Xayah tilts her head back to watch them, covering her eyes as some hit the atmosphere and burst into bright explosions of stardust instantly. 

But there’s one coloured orb of light that’s still there. 

Xayah stares at the vividly bright blue light for a moment. It feels familiar, and her eyes go wide as it bursts towards her, revealing the green center as it casts at her, slamming into her gem like lightning. She recoils back, wings flaring up as she put a hand over her gem. It’s _hers, _this light, surrounded by a thin coating of Rakan’s like a protective shell. 

__

For a blessed moment her body feels _fresh_, like that day where they’d signed the contract. She feels brand new, can sense that harsh light running through her blood and strengthening her bones. She is untouchable, like _that day_. When they’d opened their wings for the first real time and flown, danced in that bright golden sky above that planet, shining like new stars. 

"Thanks love." She whispers to that thin well of light that Rakan had given her as it ushers in her returning essence, merging all together. She can feel the dark matter in her getting pushed out, the blood dripping from her wounds dark and bubbling. Her wings shake terribly, so she lets them go limp as she sits up. That brief moment of immortality is leaving her, and she feels the weakness of her body anew. 

Around her, the false dead melt away as the Dark that blocked the light of the stars fades away slowly. The mock reality is cracking around them, glowing lines spreading out like a spiderweb from where Neeko is standing. Floating objects fall to the ground, uprooted trees and signs slip back into their proper spaces. Ran is melting like a snow-man in spring, dark matter seeping back through the crack he’d made. The guardians he’d captured fall from his arms and land limp onto the ground, still asleep. 

As the glow fades from Neeko’s skin Xayah notes her hair is now filled with golden curls, her tail a bright pink. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, but her outfit is pristine and puffy with its ruffles and frills. 

_Is Zoe really..._ ? 

Xayah pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the screaming of her leg, and whimper from the shade. She takes one step, then collapses back down onto one knee. 

_ There’s no way. Weakened, maybe. Retreating to regain power, to plan and come back _ . 

Ran is almost fully formless now, deflating like a leaky blow-up toy. His eye no longer has the glowing star mark, he seemed to have lost sentience the moment his master did. 

_That, or switched to a new body, where-ever Zoe went into hiding_ . _I’ve seen too much of her tricks to believe it’d be this easy_. 

There’s a gem on the ground, not too far from Neeko. Four pointed and pink. Xayah crawls the rest of the way and swipes it. 

_Ahri’s_ . 

It’s still a bright colour, not cracked or marbled, leaking or dulled. _ Did Zoe only steal it? If so… that off-shade with her shape earlier… just a mimic, not a true shade _ . _ Ahri is still alive. But separated this far from her gem, she’s become inanimate _ . 

It feels wrong, holding the soul-gem of her previous leader in her hands. Even on their original team, they hadn’t been close enough to handle each other’s gems. 

_Pink_ . 

Xayah scoffs; _some leader she was_. 

Exhausted, she lies back down on the ground. She feels lightheaded; she stares up at the brightening sky, watches the stars spin. The negative filter that encompassed this bubble of reality had melted away just as the rest of the environment had shrugged off the yoke of chaos, returning to normal. 

The other guardians are waking up. She can hear their excited, overlapping chattering and confused, half-asleep mumblings from where she lies. She’s not surprised that they’ve mostly forgotten about her, but she _is_ surprised when a wave of strong healing washes over her, courtesy of what she imagines is some spell of Soraka’s that extends to affect all those in an area. 

The shade suddenly starts to growl. It’s enough to make her feel the vibrations. Xayah looks up. 

Sarah is standing above the two of them, haggard and bruised. Her face twists like she swallowed something bitter. 

"Give him to me." Xayah says before the other can speak. Sarah startles. 

“I don’t - “ 

Xayah pulls Ahri’s gem out from the folds of her uniform. Sarah’s lips tighten. 

“How did you - ?!“ 

Xayah summons a feather dagger, and holds the point near the gem. 

“Give me him back, or I’ll destroy it.” 

The chatter from the happy guardians ceases. 

“You wouldn’t.” Sarah juts out her chin. “You’re on our side.” 

“Would you risk it?” Xayah replies. 

The silence continues for several awkward seconds, until Sarah takes out the once-blue gem. 

"Stop the drama - I was going to give it to you anyway. You kept your end of the deal. Though I don't know why you value a dead gem so much." Sarah mutters, rolling her eyes. She holds out Rakan's gem and Xayah takes it carefully, pressing her lips to the leaking crack with relief. She had worried that if he broke in the battle she would not feel it. 

"I find it funny that you believe he would ever willingly leave me." Xayah says, passing Ahri’s gem to Sarah quickly, then turning away after the exchange is done. She cradles the gem lovingly, ignoring the looks the guardians send one another. They don’t matter. Nothing else does. 

She clutches the gem to her chest, against her own. The blood is cold, and having what remains of him closer aches like a fresh wound, but the feeling of the brittle gem in her hands is a comfort. She breathes out, dropping her head and pressing the dulled piece of Rakan to her lips again, staring at her own clasping her cloak. It still has his blood from his hand over it, staining the fresh minty green with blackened, glinting liquid, the sheen blue and green. She hasn't washed it off, she remembers. The taste has her mouth watering. _No. Never again._

"Come on, come on!" She whispers fiercely. She feels like an overfull cup, trying to spill into another. "Take it! Take it back!" She hisses, as though she can order him. His gem is unresponsive, so Xayah twists her lips and reaches for the shredded fragments of their bond. "I won't see you stay a shade forever, you idiot. Come back to me." She coaxed, pulling on their bond desperately. She just needs a fragment, _please -_

__

_He's there_ . His presence is so faint and she barely noticed him in time, a fading echo that you can see through a dusty mirror shining from the light of a distant star. She grabs on and held that remnant tight, and _pushes_ . 

She nearly sobs with relief as his gem began to color. 

"Knew you wouldn't leave me." She whispered to his dull gem, feeling everything she had of him dripping back to where it was supposed to be. Riku and every drop of his light, she gathered and pushes it all back. _Was it really so little as that_? She had thought what Zoe kept of him would be more substantial, but it seems Zoe had kept more of her light opposed to his. 

She turns to the shade, pressing the dimly coloured gem to his chest. Her heart quickens, but nothing changes. Rakan tilts his head at her, makes a little confused noise. Xayah shakes her head, tries pushing it harder against his body. 

_It isn’t working. He should be changing back. Why - _ ? 

His earlier wounds seem to be healing at a faster rate, but outside of that he remains cloaked in shadow, eyes a luminescent gold. 

Xayah ignores the sound of whispering to pocket his gem, slowly stands. She wipes across her eyes with her arm. 

_It was okay. I have his gem. It’s enough for now_ . 

A blue portal pops into the air; several guardians jump back, several others ready their weapons. 

Ezreal hops out, carrying an unconscious Ahri bridal-style in his arms. 

“Everyone! I’m back! You’re not gonna believe where I was! There was some abandoned space temple, and everything was all warpy and screwed up - “ 

He stops a minute, takes in the still semi-destroyed landscape, the state of everyone’s torn and dirty clothes. 

“Wait. I missed it? Did we win?” 

“Yes Ez, we won.” Sarah starts to laugh at his bewildered expression, and it spreads through the others as the tension disperses, adrenaline burning off to just leave sore, tired bodies. 

Sarah takes the pink gem and brings it back over to place against Ahri’s chest. Xayah turns away. 

_My cue to leave. It won’t be long until she wakes up_ . 

Xayah makes a soft click with her tongue, and the shade stands to join her, feathers still on end from the proximity of the other guardians. They need to leave now, while the others are distracted; she doesn’t trust them not to shoot him, and she doesn’t know what would happen if they did. If Lux beamed him, or Sarah shot through his skull. She doesn’t want to know. 

She doesn’t want to lose him again. 

She’s out of practice hiding in plain sight; for so long they had just ripped through any sentience they found, but now she had to adapt to not doing so. She doesn’t want to risk anything - but Rakan clearly can’t fly, and is still wounded. 

Xayah grasps his hand, and he stays close to her as they disappear between the rubble Zoe and Ran had left behind. When she looks back, her eyes briefly meet those of Lux. 

There’s a moment there, one Xayah can't name. Then, her eyes dart to Sarah and the stirring Ahri, and she turns away. They’re not her problem anymore. Rakan would heal, and Xayah would keep him safe. Then, when he could fly, Xayah would take him far from this place. To somewhere they would be safe. 

Xayah doesn’t know how long his shade would last, without Zoe. Would he stay, because she had his gem? Forever, with her? Like he promised? 

Even though she failed him, in the end. 

Just like every time before, she had failed him. Her eyes burn and she wipes them, ignoring the black stain of her hands soaked in his blood. His eyes watch her, golden and shining in the half-light of the rising sun. 

For a second as he offers his hand, she can pretend that his hair is green, and his lips are curled into a brilliant smile and dorky fangs. That Xayah can see him as he was, before this and before then. That his eyes are mint or gold, loving either way and watching her like she was a star and he orbited her. 

He’s burning hot-cold where he touches her, pulls her into him. She leans into him, the rock-steady strength of him even despite the blood that drips from him, glinting in the sunrise. It isn’t the same, it likely never would be again; but. 

At least she managed to keep one part of him alive. Maybe, one day, that would be enough. 

“Come one, Rakan,” She whispers, watching his eyes glint as he looked at her at the sound of his name. “Let’s go home.” 

He rumble-purrs at her, his cheek warm when he presses it into her palm, and Xayah turns her head, ears lifting as she looked up at their old house. Her throat stung with the stretch, and she swallows hard. 

Back home to what they used to be, and the broken reminders of their hope. 

She closed her eyes as he nuzzled his face into the top of her head, tattered cloak wrapping around her. 

_This time, it will be different._

Xayah ignores the warm tracks over her cheeks, and the way her lungs hitch. 

_But it will never be the same._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sequel is planned. But we may not tackle that until after Christmas. This thing was a behemoth, so we might unwind with some fluffy Christmas league one-shots. >.< 
> 
> There also may be a bonus chapter. ; )
> 
> If you have any requests or ideas, feel free to yell at us here or on the Rakan main's discord. We love it. Honestly. <3
> 
> One final bonus; As a thank you gift, the first to guess the chapter title references gets to request a short drabble.
> 
> THANK YOU ALL AGAIN!!!!!! We'll see you next time!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> We hope you enjoy what we have so far! Hopefully we'll see you soon!!


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